World's most advanced flying car unveiled in Austria

Ladies and gentlemen, the future is now. A Slovakia-based technology company has unveiled its new flying car, and it looks so awesome.

The most advanced flying car ever made was unveiled at the Pioneers Festival in Vienna this week by Slovakia-based company, AeroMobil. The two-passanger prototype vehicle, called the AeroMobil 3.0, is about the size of a limousine or large luxury sedan, and works just like a transformer, morphing from car to aeroplane in minutes. In car form it can hit speeds of up to 160 km/h and as a plane, 200 km/h.

"From the front it looks a lot like a car; from the back it looks a lot like a small plane. From the side it looks insane,” says Victoria Turk from Motherboard. 

All the AeroMobil 3.0 needs to take off is 250 metres of open grassland or a paved runway, and 50 metres of either to land. When you’re ready to go, at the touch of a button its wings will automatically unfurl from its sides, sort of like an insect, and a large car becomes a small aircraft. 

“You don’t need to change vehicles when you’re travelling somewhere,” AeroMobil CCO Stefan Vadocz told Turk. “You can drive to airports or grass strips and take off, go to your destination, and then continue driving.” When you’re done, you can just keep it in your garage - no hangar required. 

But before you demand that AeroMobil shut up and take your money, you’d better go and get your pilot’s license, because you’re gonna need it when these things hit the market. Right now, only trained pilots are permitted to test out the prototype. 

Vadocz remains tight-lipped about when the company is hoping to get this thing to market, but we can't help but be a little excited.

Ebola - The Full Story

The current outbreak of Ebola has ignited a wave of alarm and general freak-out around the world. So the latest episode of It's Okay To Be Smart is here to give this whole situation a nice calm, comforting, scientific hug.

To quote American science writer David Quammen, "Ebola is no death angel, it's just a virus." The Ebola virus itself isn't the scariest thing about the current outbreak, it's the fact that there's still so much we don't know about it. We don't know how long it's been in existence, where it hides, exactly how it kills the people it infects, or if certain people are immune. But there's also a lot we do know about the virus, as Joe Hansen explains in the latest episode of It's Okay To Be Smart.

When we say someone "has Ebola", they technically have what's known as 'Ebola virus disease', which is a severe infection with a whole bevy of side effects including abdominal pain, headache, fever, nausea, vomiting, sore throat, loss of appetite, joint paint, diarrhoea, bleeding from the gums, rash, and yes, even hiccups. A book that came out in 1994 perpetuated the myth that liquified organs and bleeding eyes are also typical side effects, but this doesn't really happen. In fact, bleeding of any kind is only seen in around half of the reported cases.

Ebola's ability to lie silently in wait, like a deadly 'viral ninja' is what makes it so worrisome, but how scared should we be? "To be completely honest, unless you live in a very specific part of West Africa, are travelling to a very specific part of West Africa, or you are a medical professional treating people who are currently infected with the Ebola virus, you're probably not going to get Ebola," says Hansen. So no more panicking!

Watch It's Okay To Be Smart above to find out the ways Ebola can and can't be transmitted (no, it's not airborne), and exactly why it's unlikely to set off a global game of deadly pandemic dominoes.

How to make a rocket with sugar and kitty litter

Got some powdered sugar and kitty litter just lying around? Sure, there are some more practical uses for both of those things, but let's add some potassium nitrate to the mix and blow it all sky-high.

There's a special place in YouTuber Grant Thompson aka the King of Random's heart for rockets made from innocuous, everyday objects. First he tried making a rocket out of pool noodles and F-class rocket motors, but those motors cost $17 each, which pretty much nudges it into serious hobby territory, and most of us aren't really ready to make that kind of commitment to the practice of blowing stuff up.

But what if you could use some plain old powdered sugar and a little bit of potassium nitrate to create a homemade pyrotechnic mixture that can launch a rocket over 700 metres (2,300 feet) into the air? The other components in Thompson's 'sugar rocket' are kitty litter - which is basically just bentonite clay - PVC tubing and some oak dowel. And you're gonna need a blender you're not too worried about destroying a little bit... 

Watch the video above to find out how you can construct this awesome little homemade rocket, complete with a built-in time delay and a parachute ejection charge.

New windowless planes set to fly within a decade

The concept of windowless planes may seem futuristic and perhaps frightening for some travellers, but smartscreen panels are tipped to replace aircraft windows in 10 years, cutting down both fuel consumption and airfares.

Over 832 thousand litres of fuel are used and 700 million tonnes of carbon dioxide is released into the environment each year as a result of air travel. The aviation industry is constantly looking for ways to reduce the weight of aircraft, which would cut fuel consumption and airfares.

So researchers are now developing a windowless plane, in which the heavy windows and cabin walls of current planes would be replaced with lightweight full-length smart displays. According to the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) in the UK, which is the company behind the innovative design, 80 percent of an airline’s weight is due to fuel and the plane itself, so removing the windows could save on running costs.

“By putting windows into a plane, the fuselage needed to be strengthened," Jon Helliwell, a chemist and Director of the CPI, told Shane Hickey from The Guardian. "And by omitting them in favour of walls of screens on panels, the fuselage would be lighter."

The team envisions that windows would be replaced with hi-definition, ultra-thin and lightweight screens that display the outside world through cameras that are mounted on the plane’s exterior. Passengers would be able to control their view with the interactive technology, and could also use the display to browse the Internet.

“So you could have a display next to a seat if you wanted it; you could have a blank area next to a seat if you wanted it; you would have complete flexibility as to where you put [the panel screens]. You could put screens on the back of the seats in the middle and link them to the same cameras,” Helliwell told Hickey from The Guardian.

The screens would be made from organic light-emitting diodes (OLED’s) and wouldn't require a backlight, which means they'd use less energy and can be thinner than other displays such as LCD and plasma.

The main obstacle to overcome in the design is to create flexible OLEDs that can be used in an aeroplane-ready screen that's both durable and relatively cheap to manufacture. The team is currently using advanced equipment to fine-tune the OLEDs, and hope that the concept will become a reality in the next 10 years. 

Watch this video to find out more about this unique design: 

Plants can "hear" themselves being eaten

Plants know when they’re being chewed on, researchers have found, and they release defensive chemicals to try to stop it.

It sounds pretty gruesome, but a study released in Oecologia in July by the University of Missouri-Columbia in the US revealed that plants can actually feel the vibrations of something chewing on them, and respond defensively.

It’s still not clear whether this means plants can actually feel the chewing, but it was the first evidence that the munching sounds cause them to react. And we think it would be pretty awful to be able to sense being eaten alive.

As part of the study, the scientists put caterpillars on Arabidopsis thaliana, a small, cabbage-like plant, and then recorded the vibrations made by the caterpillar's chewing. They recorded these tiny vibrations using a special microphone that beams a laser off a reflective surface to see how fast the surface is moving.

They then played back these vibrations to a group of plants who weren't being eaten by caterpillars. A third plant was kept in silence as a control.

In the experiment, plants chewed on by caterpillars and those played the chomping sound released more mustard oil, a chemical that’s meant to fend off pests, than the plants that had been exposed to silence.

Scientists already knew that plants could change their growth pattern in reaction to certain sounds, but this is the first time they saw a plant protecting itself from the sound of a predator’s chewing.

“Our work is the first example of how plants respond to an ecologically relevant vibration. We found that feeding vibrations signal changes in the plant cells' metabolism, creating more defensive chemicals that can repel attacks from caterpillars,” said senior research scientist Heidi Appel in a press release.

The next step is to find out more about how different plant species are able to sense and respond to these chewing vibrations. The results could help farmers better protect crops from pests in the future, and help scientists understand more about how plants sense and respond to their environments.

Check out the video below to find out more about the discovery - and listen to the disturbing chewing sounds:

                         http://vimeo.com/99635253

Why our brains like everything to be personalised

This video was created just for you.

In the latest episode of BrainCraft, Vanessa Hall explores the science behind personalisation, and why we seemingly can't resist anything that's been offered just to us.

For example, research shows that waitresses who deliver chocolate as a "personal gesture" at the end of a meal get tipped more. And it's not just in the food industry, we generally feel indebted to people who do something nice for us.

It's a similar phenomenon to the one that causes many people to believe their horoscopes and fortunes. When we believe a message has personal significance to us, research shows we're more likely to believe it's accurate. This is known as subjective validation.

A recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study even showed that the areas of our brain associated with considering different perspectives, which is a key part of persuasion, are more active when we receive tailored messages or advice. So it's almost like we can't help but be sold on a personalised message.

Watch the latest episode of BrainCraft above to find out more about how a little targeted act can go a long way.

World first: “dead heart” successfully transplanted at Australian hospital

In a game-changing breakthrough, Australian surgeons have successfully performed a heart transplant with a heart that had stopped beating.

Doctors and scientists at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, Australia recently transplanted two circulatory dead hearts, which were no longer beating, into two patients, both of whom are now recovering well.

Currently, donor hearts are taken from brain dead patients whose hearts are still beating, which limits the number of hearts available for transplant.

But the donor hearts used for these world-first transplants had been dead for at least 20 minutes, and were revived using a ground-breaking preservation fluid before being successfully transplanted into patients with heart failure.

Bob Graham, the executive director of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, who led the research team, told Elizabeth Jackson from the ABC that this will mean around 30 percent more people will be able to have heart transplants.

The successful transplants were the result of a collaboration between the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney and St Vincent’s Hospital.

Michelle Gribilar, 57, had the first transplant of this kind a few months ago, and is now recovering well. The second recipient, Jan Damen, underwent the surgery a fortnight ago and is now in recovery. Both suffered congenital heart failure.

The scientists developed a special preservation solution that works on a “heart in a box” to keep the dead heart healthy even without blood flow.

Graham explained the process to ABC:

“[Five minutes after the donor has died] we can take the heart out and we can put it on a console where we connect it up with blood going through the heart and providing oxygen.

"Gradually the heart ... starts beating again, and we can keep it warm and we can transport it on this console and we also give it a preservation solution that allows it to be more resistant to the damage of lack of oxygen.

"So those two things coming together almost like a perfect storm have allowed this sort of donation, this sort of transplantation of a heart that has stopped beating to occur. Before that it wasn't possible.”

4D printing creates structures that self-assemble

Forget 3D printing - the future of manufacturing is 4D printing complex structures that can assemble themselves.

                                       

In the future, manufacturing may get a whole lot easier, with scientists now developing 4D printing technology that allows them to create structures that can actually build themselves.

This episode of RiAus’s A Week in Science explains how 4D printing works, and some of its incredible potential.

Right now, 3D printing allows us to create highly complex structures using a computer design. However, these parts still need to be put together into a final structure. But 4D printing goes a step further, and prints high-tech materials that, when activated by a substance such as water or heat, assemble themselves. 

These structures are made by combining plastic and a smart "memory material", which can remember a previous shape and revert back to it under certain conditions, like this amazing shape-shifting paperclip.

This means researchers can print flat-pack objects that are easy to ship, but then can assemble themselves on arrival - potentially saving us hours of messing around with Allen keys and cryptic Ikea instructions.

Objects can also be 4D printed so that they change form in different conditions - for example an umbrella could change into a broad shade screen when it gets sunny, and then morph back into rain protection when it's wet.

Find out more about recent breakthroughs in 4D printing technology and how it can be used in medicine in the episode of A Week in Science above.

Our brains have an internal calorie counter, research suggests

A new neuroimaging study suggests that our brain evaluates food based on caloric density, even when we're not conscious of how many calories something contains, which is perhaps why many of us prefer junk food.

Researchers from the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital of McGill University in the US, have discovered that our brain subconsciously makes decisions on what food to eat based on the food’s calorie content. The findings which are published in the journal Psychological Science, could explain why many people choose high calorie foods.

"Earlier studies found that children and adults tend to choose high-calorie food" said Alain Dagher, neurologist and lead author of the study, in a press release. "The easy availability and low cost of high-calorie food has been blamed for the rise in obesity. Their consumption is largely governed by the anticipated effects of these foods, which are likely learned through experience.”

The study involved a group of participants who were asked to rate pictures of familiar foods based on which they would like to consume. They were then asked to estimate the calorie content of each food item. Observations showed that the participants preferred high caloric food, even though they were not able to accurately indicate the calorie content.

The team also performed brain scans on the participants while they were evaluating the food images which supported the observations. The scan results showed that activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex - an area of the brain that is involved in decision making - was correlated with the foods’ caloric content. While the participants were rating the foods, there was increased activity in the insular cortex - a part of the brain that is involved in processing the sensory properties of food.

“Our study sought to determine how people's awareness of caloric content influenced the brain areas known to be implicated in evaluating food options. We found that brain activity tracked the true caloric content of foods,” said Dagher. 

The team believe that understanding the reasons behind people’s food choices could assist in preventing factors that lead to obesity, and other diet related health problems such as heart disease, and type 2 diabetes.

Scientists have worked out how to desalinate and reuse the wastewater from fracking

Researchers have found a cheap way to remove the salt from the wastewater produced by fracking, helping to make the practice more environmentally friendly.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a method used for recovering natural gas and oil from shale rock buried underground. The technique involves drilling deep into the Earth, and injecting a high-pressure water mixture containing sand and chemicals into the rock, allowing the gas to release into the well. 

The water used in the mixture drains the salts from the rocks, and when it comes back to the surface, it is three to six times saltier than seawater. This salty water cannot be reused for fracking and so it is disposed into the environment. 

Researchers have now shown that this salt can in fact be removed and the wastewater be reused, a discovery that substantially reduces the need for freshwater in the fracking industry.

The desalination procedure, proposed by researchers from MIT in the US, in the journalApplied Energy, involves several stages of electrodialysis, a method where salt ions move from one solution to another solution with the help of an electric current. Electrodialysis has been around for more than 50 years, but until now, it was not thought of being capable of treating such high-salinity water.

The electrodialysis process becomes less efficient as the water purifies, as its ability to conduct electricity decreases with each stage. But that's OK, because the team do not expect to purify the water to make it safe for drinking, they just want it to be able to be reused in the fracking process.

Another advantage to the system is that the researchers can control how much salt they take out of the water - they're now investigating what the optimal salinity is for the water to be reused for fracking.

"The big question at the moment is what salinity you should reuse the water at," said Ronan McGovern, lead researcher of the paper, in a press release.

This cost-effective system could dramatically lessen the amount of waste water that needs to be disposed from fracking sites, in turn, helping reduce the global problem of water scarcity. 

"If you can close the cycle, you can reduce or eliminate the burden of the need for fresh water,” said John Lienhard, a co-author of the study, in a press release. 

Scientists have opened the blood-brain barrier for the first time

For the first time in humans, researchers have managed to penetrate the brain’s protector, meaning that doctors will be able to deliver drugs to previously inaccessible parts of the brain.

Image: Juan Gaertner/Shutterstock

The blood-brain barrier is a network of cells that separates the brain from the rest of the body, preventing harmful toxins and chemicals in the blood stream from entering the brain tissue. This blocking mechanism makes it very difficult to deliver drugs to the brain for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders and cancer.

This protective barrier has been opened in animals but never in humans, until now. A medical start-up company CarThera in France, have opened and closed the barrier on demand with the help of an ultrasound brain implant and an injection of microbubbles.

The findings were presented last week at the Focused Ultrasound symposium in the US by Michael Canney, a neuroscientist at CarThera. The study involved the treatment of glioblastoma - the most aggressive form of brain cancer -  in four patients. Patients with glioblastoma usually need surgery to remove the tumour, after which they are given chemotherapy drugs to destroy any remaining cancerous cells. The blood-brain barrier becomes leaky when a tumour is present, so a small amount of the drugs are able to enter the brain. 

“If more of the chemotherapy drugs could get through, they’d do a better job of killing cancer,"Canney told Chris Weller from Medical Daily. 

To penetrate the barrier, the surgeons first inserted a tiny ultrasound brain implant into the patients’ skulls. They then injected microbubbles to counter the ultrasound imaging. When the ultrasound’s pulses collided with the bubbles, it caused them to vibrate, pushing apart the cells of the blood-brain barrier. To confirm the observations, an MRI scan showed that the microbubbles were effectively crossing the blood-brain barrier.

"We hope this means the chemotherapy drug is doing the same thing," Canney told Helen Thomson from New Scientist.

The team estimate that the novel approach keeps the barrier open for up to six hours, allowing enough time to deliver high dosages of the drugs. 

It has been suggested in animal models that simply opening up the barrier can reduce the protein plaques in an Alzheimer’s patient. Canney and his colleagues will now look at these interactions, and study the role of the immune system in these observations.

The Sun is unleashing powerful solar flares from a sunspot the size of Jupiter

NASA has captured striking footage of an erupting solar flare from an active region on the Sun, and experts say that there are more flares coming our way.

Solar flares occur when magnetic energy that has built up in the solar atmosphere is suddenly released by the Sun. Areas that are magnetically active are indicated by sunspots - visible dark spots on the Sun that indicate the magnetic field is very strong - thousands of times stronger than the Earth’s field.

The most recent flares observed by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft were classified as X-class - the most powerful kind of flare. This giant flare erupted from an active region on the Sun, marked by a group of sunspots called AR (Active Region) 2192 which appeared six days ago. AR 2192 is huge - and by huge we mean it’s almost the size of Jupiter. 

“It continues to grow in size and complexity,” C. Alex Young, a solar specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, told Rob Waugh from Metro.

The flare was seen under an extreme ultraviolet wavelength that vividly captured the intense heat emitted. 

Until now, AR 2192 has been pointing away from Earth, but it is now starting to rotate towards the Earth, and is likely to emit more flares towards us in the days ahead.

The Earth’s magnetic field protects humans from the effects of solar flares, but the eruptions can cause interruptions to radio communications and affect the accuracy of GPS satellites.

The position of the gigantic sunspot will also result in a stunning partial solar eclipse tonight. 

Watch this incredible footage of the Sun emitting the flares:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1N_GK2kN-A

The quantum force that can make boats crash into each other

Well, sort of. The latest episode of The Quantum Around You explains the Casimir force, and its real-world impacts.

Back in the 1800s, sailors believed there was a “mysterious force” that would pull ships together if they sailed alongside each other.

It sounds superstitious, but it turns out there may have been some truth to the story - and this mystery force may have been similar to a quantum mechanical effect known as the Casimir force. 

In the latest episode of The Quantum Around You, Associate Professor Andrea Morellofrom the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications at Australia's University of New South Wales (UNSW), provides one of the simplest explanations of the Casimir force we’ve seen, and shows why it’s so crucial to helping us shrink down current technology.

To use boats as an example, picture a ship sailing along a choppy ocean, being swayed by waves on either side.

Because there is an equal chance of waves hitting the boat from every side, the boat continues along its straight path.

But if there are two boats next to each other, any wave between the two will need to have a length that’s equal to or shorter than the distance between the two ships - this means that there’s less chance of the two boats being hits by waves from in between each other than from outside, where there are no limitations on wave type.

As a result, the boats will eventually end up being pushed towards each other by the force of the outside wave and will crash.

While that’s bad news for sailors, the Casimir force is also causing a lot of problems now for people who want to create minuscule metal switches that are made up of two metal plates - the kind of switches that are required to shrink down computers and other devices such as mobile phones.

Instead of ocean waves, the metal plates are being affected by electromagnetic waves, and there’s more force coming from outside the two plates than from between them.

While that might not sound like a very strong force, when you’re working on the nanoscale, it can cause small metallic objects to stick together, as Morello explains (much better than we do, trust us). So take an online quantum physics class from one of our favourite lecturers by watching his video above, and find out more about the Casimir force and how it’s impacting the miniaturisation of today’s technology.

Why does your voice sound so different in recordings?

Sorry, your voice actually DOES sound like that in real life. This is why.

If you’ve ever heard your voice played back from a recording, you’ll be familiar with how awkward it is - suddenly everything you say sounds higher and more nasal and just wrong, and you're left questioning: "Do I really sound like that?"

Unfortunately, yes, as Hank Green explains in the latest episode of the SciShow. But that doesn't mean that your voice sounds bad in real life, it’s just that you’re so used to hearing it in your head, where it sounds deeper and more resonant.

This is because when we talk, we’re not only hearing the sound that comes out of our mouths, travels through the air and hits our inner ears, but also the sound that bounces around in our own, fleshy heads before hitting our inner ear. And all of this bone and muscle in our heads is better at transmitting low frequency vibrations rather than higher tones, so we end up hearing ourselves with a lower voice than we have in real life.

But there is good news - just because your real voice sounds weird to you, that doesn't mean it's actually bad. As Robbie Gonzalez from io9 explains, there's research to suggest that other people prefer your recorded voice to the one in your head.

Watch the latest episode above to find out more about what you sound like to other people. And spare a thought for Hank and all those other YouTubers who have to listen to their voices played back every. single. day as part of their job. As if hearing your own voicemail message wasn't bad enough...

This 3D-printed heart helped save a baby’s life

A nearly perfect replica of a two-week-old baby’s heat allowed doctors to practice and plan the usually-complicated surgery that saved the infant’s life.

A 3D-printed heart has helped to save the life of a two-week-old baby, who was being treated at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in Manhattan for congenital heart defects (CHD).

The near-perfect replica wasn’t used for a transplant, but rather to help doctors practice the extremely difficult procedure that helped save the baby’s life.

The infant was suffering from abnormalities such as holes and unusually formed chambers, which can be corrected with surgery - but until doctors actually cut a patient open, they don’t know exactly what they’re dealing with, so these operations are extremely complex and risky.

Using this model, the team was able to plan out the operation in advance and even practice it. 

Dr Emile Bach, the head of cardiac surgery at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, performed the surgery on the 21st of July, and explained to the Connecticut News:

“The baby’s heart had holes, which are not uncommon with CHD, but the heart chambers were also in an unusual formation, rather like a maze. In the past we had to stop the heart and look inside to see what to do. With this technique, it was like we had a road map to guide us. We were able to repair the baby’s heart with one operation.”

With the help of the 3D printed model and practice in advance, Dr Bach was able to fix the baby’s heart in just one operation.

This isn’t the first time 3D printing has helped doctors out - last month doctors used a 3D printed brain to help practice the surgery that would save an infant’s life.

If these two cases are anything to go by, it’s clear that 3D printing is going to play a huge role in helping doctors perform more accurate and successful surgeries in the future.

New device turns your paper plane into a drone

Clip-on technology allows you to control a paper plane with your smart phone.

Image: The Wall Street Journal & PowerUp 3.0

Thanks to a new device, you can now create a controllable drone in less than one minute. But it doesn’t stop them from nose-diving, unfortunately.

The Kickstarter-funded PowerUp 3.0 is a lightweight guidance and propulsion system power by a tiny battery. All you need to do to use it is fold your own aircraft, clip it on and connect it to your smartphone using bluetooth.

Then you simply throw the paper plane, and if it takes to the skies you can control its flight from your phone, as Jack Nicas reports for The Wall Street Journal.

As anyone who’s played with paper planes know, that’s a big if. The Guinness World Record for flying a paper plane is currently 27.9 seconds, and, let's be fair, most made at home tend to crash within seconds.

But a YouTube user has posted videos of himself flying his PowerUp paper plane for several minutes, showing it's possible. It all depends on your ability to fold a aerodynamically sound aircraft, and that's part of the fun.

Of course, these drones aren’t as impressive or useful as the ones that could one day deliver packages or beam high-speed internet for Google and Facebook, but they’re pretty cool to play around with. And they’re only US$50.

But minidrones such as this one are still stirring up some debate about what should be allowed in our air space, so enjoy playing while you can.

WATCH: Giant 3D-printed robot spider undulates for you

A robotics PhD student has created a 3D-printed, iPad-controlled robot spider that can view its terrain for better creeping.

PhD student Matt Bunting from the University of Arizona in the US has built a robotic hexapod as part of an exploration into how computer vision and locomotion can work together.

The first iteration of his robot spider was displayed earlier this year at the International Consumer Electronics Show in the US, and he’s now improved the design with 3D printing and a better computer. "I decided to give it a makeover with a 3D printer and I added an Intel Atom-based computer on the top. Then a few weeks ago we converted the computer to run on Intel Edison,”Bunting told Nate Lanxon from Wired UK at the 2014 Maker Faire in Rome this month.

Intel Edison is a new low energy, tiny computer - about the size of an SD memory card - designed for use in wearable electronics because it's got Bluetooth and WIFI already built in, but it’s also perfect for Bunting’s spider robot. A USB port in the back of the robot allows him to install computer vision tasks to get it exploring its nearby terrain using its camera vision.

Watch it undulating at the Maker Faire in the video above, it's pretty creepy. And we can't help but be a little concerned that we're now one step closer to bringing this arachnid monstrosity into reality so it can burn down our cities and crush our cars with its titanium abdomen: