African Firm Sells Pepper-spray Bullet Firing Drones

Here it comes ...

Flying 3D Printer

It's a gratuitous stunt, but it's nice someone tried it.

Self Folding Robots

Wow! Self-folding.

More Quadrotor Construction

We're Idiots

I mean, how stupid are we, really?



We are sprinting to put in place a network of autonomous, self-feeding, all-seeing drones that are too small and manoeuvrable to avoid, outrun or fight. One of two things will happen : we'll lose control of them (Skynet scenario) or the state will retain control of them (Big Brother scenario). There isn't a third option.

Soft autonomous earthworm robot at MIT

HyTAQ Robot

SpiderBots

Wow!

Cheap Chinese Gadgets

Is it my imagination, or have cheap Chinese-made gadgets made a bit of a jump since I was last paying attention to them, bringing more cool stuff even cheaper than ever. Checking out LighTake I'm seeing quadcopters for £30, remote control vehicles with cameras, some really rather nice Arduino controlled autonomous vehicles, serious Android powered computers in pen-drive format for £40 while the same thing in netbook format is £50. Laser fingernails and other cute LED decorations.

I'm sure most of this stuff isn't really very good (quality, capacity). But can anyone doubt that a tablet-controlled, GPS enabled, Android powered quadcopter with video camera for around £30 is just around the corner?

Chris Anderson on Drones

His story in Wired

Pirate Drones

Freedom (of speech) drones are getting closer.

Cockroaches

You know, cockroaches are going to be soooo pissed-off with us when they take over the world.

Here It Comes

Anti Protest Surveillance for the authorities :

Why Drones Are Advancing So Quickly

John Robb on drone development. It's all about the control systems.

(Though the new ways of manufacturing don't hurt either)

Musical Quadcopters

Another demonstration of just how well co-ordinated (in time and space) quadcopters are these days.

Micro Drones

I'm, frankly, gob-smacked by this video :

Both by the implication of how cheap and simple it will be to manufacture micro-drones (or anything else) with cut laminates and folding techniques. And the widespread ubiquity of drones that it implies.

via Global Guerrillas. (WarpLink RoboFold)

DIY Drones also links a printed quad-copter : 

We have no idea what's about to hit us here ... 

A Swarm of Nano-Copters

This is probably the thing that will change the world more profoundly and shockingly than almost anything else over the next 5 years.

That's about the time it took smartphones to become ubiquitous in the developed world, and for business and culture to re-organize themselves around them. (If you're conservative, you can assume it took 10 years.)

Now imagine that nano-quadcopters (with video surveillance) hit hundreds of millions of cheap units in the next 5-10 years. What happens when everyone from concerned parents to nosy teenagers, criminals to police to political protestors have them. What happens when they routinely monitor traffic in the streets? Routinely carry out inspections of industrial infrastructure? Routinely patrol your house when you're out? When they're a standard tool of industrial espionage and gutter journalism? Where they guide automated cranes and architectural scale printers in docks and on construction sites? Where they monitor pollution and conduct ecological surveys in forests?

Nano-quadcopters and sousveillance are coming. And the world is going to be unimaginable.

Quadcopters building.

OMFG!

Cheap printed autonomous fliers.

We are racing towards a zero-privacy future.

Impressive robot "cockroach". Fast, cheap, out-of-control and able to keep running after falling 28 meters.

Yeuch!