So what’s new in the world of aerial automatons?

Here’s a swarm of quad-rotor robots hovering in formation. They’re a creation of the GRASP labs at the University of Pennsylvania.

Kind of cool. Before you get too impressed, check out the blooper reel at io9 and see all the ways the little four-rotor guys can screw up.

Sure, they’re cute, but what can the little guys do? Here’s an exhibit titled “Flight Assembled Architecture,” created at the FRAC Centre in Orléans, France. Several quad-copters are used to pick up polystyrene foam blocks and drop them into place, eventually creating a 6m tower. This is the work of Swiss architect Gramazio & Kohler and Italian robot designer Raffaello D’Andrea.

There’s more about this sort of Flying Machine Enabled Construction at the website of the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control.

These little rotor robots are not the only kind of flying bot out there. Markus Fischer and his team at Festo, a German tech company, have created “SmartBird,” a robot that flies in the same manner as a bird. Here he is displaying their creation at the TED Talks:

Finally, the good folks at Neural Robotics, Inc have produced this RC gunship. For all I know, Neural Robotics is a respected company with a sterling reputation. However, it looks like two good ‘ol boys got together and said, “Hey, let’s build us a big RC chopper and strap a shotgun to it!”

Here’s a tribute to a deity that most of us worship every morning: coffee. Along with bacon and chocolate, coffee is part of our holy trinity.

I could wish this was a little more balanced. I’ve gotten used to hearing conflicting reports from the media about whether coffee prevents cancer or causes cancer. If you read the Daily Mail, probably both at once.

Interestingly, the video gives credit to caffeine for helping fuel the Enlightenment. Since modern atheism is a product of the Enlightenment, that means that coffee created atheism. Somehow, I always suspected that.

Via Open Culture