Gadgetory

welcome to what the future on today's show autonomous shape-shifting robots Halloween's best dressed robot and a near seizure-inducing look inside one of Elon Musk's flagship projects give this little robot a job to do it'll figure out a way to get it done even if it requires a little shape-shifting engineers at Cornell University designed it to observe its surroundings and adapt its shape to accomplish the task at hand so watch this here they told the robot to retrieve that pink object on your screen now the robot recognizes it's too wide so watch what it does like a glove okay let's take it up a notch here the robots playing mailman it's got to deliver a package at the top of those stairs so that worked but we should tell you that one delivery took 24 tries still better than on track those cubes attach magnetically and cameras collect data about the robot surroundings it chooses its shape from a library of 57 possible configurations so this type of technology could be incredibly useful in disaster situations when robots could be used to rescue people trapped after an earthquake or during a hurricane cleanup this bot did some shape-shifting of its own for Halloween this is Oregon State University's robot named Cassie now they built Cassie an ATS T costume for Halloween if you're not familiar ATS TSR transports used by imperial troops in the Star Wars but they didn't stop at the costume they went the extra parsec and shot a video of Cassie blasting lasers in a forest which may or may not be Endor now according to OSU's YouTube channel no Ewoks were harmed in the making of this video here's the best glimpse we've gotten so far into Elon Musk's vision for high-speed travel he tweeted this 30-second time-lapse video it's a walkthrough of the tunnel his boring company is digging under la he didn't say how long it is right now he just said he walked the full length and called it disturbingly long the plan is to make it to miles the idea here is passengers would be transported on skates in groups up to 16 at speeds of up to 155 miles per hour definitely faster than sitting in LA traffic though that's a pretty low bar musk said the project is still on track to open December 10th with test rides starting the next day okay time to take a question from you guys Sean John asked us a while back if the Bourne company project is safe enough for an earthquake now surprisingly enough engineers agree that tunnels are actually one of the safest places to be during an earthquake that's because underground structures move with the soil they don't sway back and forth like buildings do okay what makes you say WTF let us know in the comments that's gonna do it for this show I'm Andy Altmann thanks for watching what the future