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Category: futurism – Page 834

Meet Skybalonyx skapter, the newest prehistoric reptile to be found in Arizona

A new species of prehistoric reptile has apparently been discovered within the depths of the Petrified Forest National Park in northeastern Arizona.

Named Skybalonyx skapter, the fossilized remains are believed to be a new species of drepanosaur, a reported 220-million-year-old burrowing reptile that potentially looked like a combination of an anteater and chameleon, the Petrified Forest National Park said Tuesday in a news release.

Skybalonyx skapter, though, may have looked even more peculiar, the release said.

‘The rumors are true’; Nest of ‘murder’ hornets found in Washington state

The presence of a Asian giant hornet nest, also known as murder hornets, has been confirmed in Washington state.

“The rumors are true — our entomologists located the first-ever #AsianGiantHornet nest in the U.S. late yesterday,” a tweet from the Washington State Department of Agriculture reads. It also includes a video of the nest.

Asian giant hornets are the world’s largest hornet and are native to areas of east Asia, south Asia and parts of eastern Russia.

Airbus Tests Bird-Like Flapping Wings For Its Future Aircraft

The planes of the future may have flapping wings. 😃

Is it a bird, is it a plane? Well, this new Airbus prototype aircraft is kind of both.

The plane manufacturer has unveiled a scale model aiplane that actually flaps its wings during flight. The model, named AlbatrossONE, has been going through various stages of testing since last year, and recently hit a new milestone by completing a successful ‘gate-to-gate’ proof of concept flight.

While the AlbatrossONE fuselage looks more or less the same as the aircraft we’re used to flying on, the model is equipped with longer-than-normal wings that are able to bend backwards and forwards at the tip, which Airbus says will allow for more efficient flight.

Boston Dynamics will start selling arms for its robodog Spot next year

Boston Dynamics has reportedly already sold more than 250 of its $75,000 Spot robots since starting commercial sales back in June. Interested and deep-pocketed parties can purchase one directly from the company’s website as well as a host of accessories, from $1,650 charging bricks to $34,570 lidar and camera kits. But one add-on which we’ve seen Spot with since some of its earliest demo videos was the prehensile arm sprouting from between its shoulder blades. But come next January, Spots around the world are going to get a whole lot more handsy.

“The next thing on the future Spot is that we’re going to make it available with a robot arm in a few months,” Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert told the virtual crowd at the Collision from Home conference in June. “We have prototypes working, but we don’t have them available as a product yet. Once you have an arm on a robot, it becomes a mobile manipulation system. It really opens up just vast horizons on things robots can do. I believe that the mobility of the robot will contribute to the dexterity of the robot in ways that we just don’t get with current fixed factory automation.”

Stanford’s ‘Gecko Glove’ makes Spider-Man climbing possible

Circa 2016

Never let anyone crush your dreams. Last week the results of a University of Cambridge study spread through the news, claiming that the dream of Spider-Man-like abilities for humans is simply impossible. By their reasoning, sticky pads need to scale up in order to support increased weight, and as a result, the size of a gecko is about as big as a vertical climber can be. The only problem? An engineer at Stanford showed off a way around that problem back in 2014. Now Elliot Hawkes has dropped a diss track on YouTube firing shots at Cambridge and Stephen Colbert, showing off his climbing skills thanks to a “Gecko Glove.”

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