Robot muscles for example. I’m pretty sure that servos aren’t the way to go, although they’re dominating things at the moment. Robert Full went on about designing from nature a while back… noting that most organisms legs were basically feet on springy sticks.

“the control algorithms are embedded in the form of the animal itself.

Compare and contrast… “the world’s fastest” hexapod based on servos compared with The Stanford Sprawl machine, that uses springy legs

(from : via)

The worlds fastest hexapod is a LOT faster than the others – and pretty clever – but it’s still considerably slower than the considerably less clever model…

… and it’s all down to the muscles. A missing link in robotics is muscles. I went on about air-muscles a while back… and pneumatics is pretty interesting because it does all clip together like lego… but compressors are too big at the moment.

So anyway. There it is – missing links. Other missing links that I can think of off the top of my head – that we are creeping towards slowly:

• fast-charging, long storing, more efficient batteries
• pennies per watt solar electric
• cheap and easy oil from algae extraction
• smooth 3D printing
• Direct to retina screens
• a brain -> machine link

etc etc. A bit like flat screens ( the thing you’re probably looking at right now)… classic “Are We There Yet” technology that’s predicted decades in advance and takes an eternity to turn up… but when it does (as predicted) it changes everything.

But something tells me people won’t find them as useful as they think they’re going to.

This is an example of… err…. “are we there yet, are we there yet, are we there yet” technology. AWTY-Tech. Sorry. I can’t think of a better way of describing it.

Something that’s been predicted for what seems like an eternity, but never seems to get here. Flat-screen TVs were an example of this – it took decades for them to turn up. Some things like jet-packs, ray-guns, teleporters etc probably never will… although because they’re so warmly anticipated, any “news” that they will instantly goes to the top of the headlines.

Solar power is another one I think. It’s been heading this way for as long as I can remember – in fact see the little black dots on the rooves of these houses

View Larger Map

Those are solar water-heaters. I used to live in one of those houses in the early 70s, and we had the same solar water heaters then.

So. Anyway. Pico Projectors… problem #1 : they don’t create very big displays… so you probably aren’t going to watch movies on them. problem #2 : they still kindof need screens to project onto… which are even more hassle to carry around than a laptop.

Then again, if they’re hackable (and it looks like they are) then anything could happen – such is the genius of hackability… and I still get the feeling that they will become as standard on cellphones as cameras now are.