High Five

(via)

So obviously it’s been a bit of a let-down… about a year ago, we saw this video

and thought the future was here already – these things would spread like little self-replicating monsters and do useful stuff and make pests of themselves and so on…

… but although videos of them have proliferated like crazy, they don’t seem to do much other than… well, pressups. And Yoga. Yoga and pressups – the ‘hello world’ moment in the life of a hexapod. But then what?

Anyway, this new one is pretty cool – in a pressupy, yogary sort of way

the legs are a lot more natural looking movementwise – and I still get that knifing chill of arachnophobia when the thing starts walking. Apparently there are 4 degrees of freedom rather than 3 or… like 2, or 1… or none at all. Something that just sortof stands there. There was one of those in The Tate recently. The Spider of the Tate. <--- click that link. Go on, I dare you. But back to hexapods... we really need to figure out something for them to "do". And don’t say search and rescue.