Meet the engineers who make balloons for planetary exploration. By David Pescovitz
54: MAKE’s Special Section: Robotics Learn how to make and modify robots in this 18-page special section. Included: IBM’s Thomas Zimmerman shows you how to construct a “mini Mars Rover” out of an RC truck and a wireless webcam, fighting tanks with bicore brains, 10 tips for Lego bot builders, an introduction to BEAM robots, a review of RadioShack’s Vex robotics system, and a visit to an electromechanical bartender convention.
40PROTO BEAM ROBOTS “Balloons provide a The BEAM approach to unique observation plat- robot design creates nimble form for doing planetary robots from simple compo-science that you simply nents, with no programming can’t do any other way,” required. Many BEAMbot says Jeffery Hall, who leads behaviors are controlled by JPL’s aerobot research. “nervous nets.” These are “One of the great attrac- simple control circuits that tions of balloons is that emulate low-level peripheral it’s fairly easy to make nerves in a spinal column. them. Then you get to take them outside and fly them around.”
72: Quick and Dirty Make an air-compressor manifold. By Mister Jalopy
Columns
11: Dale Dougherty Shouldn’t people make their own ringtones, not buy them?
We have met the artificial intelligence, and he is us.
14: Life Hacks How to do boring tasks. By Merlin Mann and Danny O’Brien
ON THE COVER 16: Bruce Sterling When MAKE Art Director Why designer Michele De Kirk von Rohr took these Lucchi makes conceptual art solar-powered robots (pro- with chainsaws. vided by solarbotics.com) outside for a photo shoot, 26: Cory Doctorow they wouldn’t sit still. Like Hollywood feels the sting of a Hollywood cockroach its own copyright laws. wrangler, von Rohr was busy keeping the electronic 44: Distributist Tech insects from wandering. Tolkien meets capitalism. Cover photographer By Tom Owad Douglas Adesko wisely confined the critters to an indoor setting.
48: Saul Griffith Why play a video game when you can play with CAD?
50: Heirloom Tech Totch Brown’s pit pan gator boat. By Tim Anderson
153: Citizen Scientist Build a visible haze photometer with an old video case and $20 worth of parts. By Dr. Shawn
185: RetroComputing Scavenging components from cast-off tech. By Tom Owad
190: George Dyson 1951: The dawn of the digital universe.
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