Gadgetory

welcome to what the future your destination for all those tech stories that make you say WTF now today we are a step closer to flying around in air taxis boeing tweeted out this video of what it says is its first test flight of its autonomous vertical takeoff and landing vehicle now during the flight the vehicle only demonstrates a few abilities namely takeoff hovering and landing as well as some autonomous abilities boeing says it will expand testing to include traditional wing base flight and transitioning between those two states the company says that's the trickiest part boeing hasn't named the aircraft though we do know it's designed to be completely autonomous and that it's electric motors and battery are designed to give it a range of up to 50 miles now this comes just weeks after helicopter bell unveiled a non working prototype of its Nexus flying air taxi at CES both Bell and Boeing have partnered with uber on its plan for our network of flying air taxi uber has said it hopes to launch uber air by 2023 Blue Origin returned to space this morning after a six-month hiatus this marked the tenth successful launch of the new Shepard rocket now onboard were eight research projects sponsored by NASA the Shepard is like a smaller version of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket now last week we origin which is owned by Amazon's Jeff Bezos showed us its vision of its own future with dis animation this is the planned new Glen rocket named for NASA astronaut John Glenn it's designed for launching heavier payloads like satellites and even people into orbit Blue Origin says the Rockets first stage will be reusable for 25 missions they're hoping to launch the new Glenn sometime next year what you're seeing here is thousands of microbots behaving like human cells now that means they can communicate with each other and determine where they're needed on their own they don't need to be told what to do now if this looks familiar it may be reminding you of the microbots from big hero six what I want them to do in this instance scientists program each bot with various levels of a simulated substance they called morphogen now the green BOTS have the highest morphogen levels researchers told all the bots to seek out others with those high levels of morphogen now you end up with these concentrations of green bots that scientists say resemble what's known as a turing spot those are patterns that emerge naturally in nature now in the future researchers imagine thousands of these BOTS creating dynamic shapes like a temporary bridge that adapts to shape and fits the terrain alright time for a question Kevin wants to know if the Bell Nexus flying air taxi would be really loud Bell is touting this as the future of urban rideshares now even though it's powered by those six massive fans Bell says it will be quiet enough for city travel of course we haven't seen a working model yet and Bell says testing won't begin until 2023 all right what makes you say WTF let us know in the comments if you enjoyed this video think about giving us a thumbs up that's gonna do it for this week i'm andy Altman thanks for watching what the future