Features
Meet the engineers who make balloons for planetary exploration. By David Pescovitz
54: MAKE’s Special Section: Robotics Learn how to make and modify robots in this 18-page special section. Included: IBM’s Thomas Zimmerman shows you how to construct a “mini Mars Rover” out of an RC truck and a wireless webcam, fighting tanks with bicore brains, 10 tips for Lego bot builders, an introduction to BEAM robots, a review of RadioShack’s Vex robotics system, and a visit to an electromechanical bartender convention.
76
40
PROTO “Balloons provide a unique observation platform for doing planetary science that you simply can’t do any other way,” says Jeffery Hall, who leads JPL’s aerobot research. “One of the great attractions of balloons is that it’s fairly easy to make them. Then you get to take them outside and fly them around.”
BEAM ROBOTS The BEAM approach to robot design creates nimble robots from simple components, with no programming required. Many BEAMbot behaviors are controlled by “nervous nets.” These are simple control circuits that emulate low-level peripheral nerves in a spinal column.
Columns
Shouldn’t people make their Why play a video game when own ringtones, not you can play with CAD? buy them?
13: Tim O’Reilly Totch Brown’s pit pan gator We have met the artificial boat. By Tim Anderson intelligence, and he is us.
How to do boring tasks.
72: Quick and Dirty Make an air-compressor manifold. By Mister Jalopy
By Merlin Mann and
ON THE COVER When MAKE Art Director Kirk von Rohr took these solar-powered robots ( provided by solarbotics.com) outside for a photo shoot, they wouldn’t sit still. Like a Hollywood cockroach wrangler, von Rohr was busy keeping the electronic insects from wandering. Cover photographer Douglas Adesko wisely confined the critters to an indoor setting.
Build a visible haze photo-
16: Bruce Sterling meter with an old video Why designer Michele De case and $20 worth of parts. Lucchi makes conceptual art By Dr. Shawn with chainsaws.
26: Cory Doctorow Scavenging components Hollywood feels the sting of from cast-off tech. its own copyright laws. By Tom Owad
Tolkien meets capitalism. 1951: The dawn of the digital By Tom Owad universe.
References:
Archives