Robots seem to be all the rage these days, and it sure helps that modern day movies like Transformers and The Matrix make machines look so cool. Unfortunately, real world robots have yet to achieve such a level of intelligence and sentience (and we might just want to keep them dumbed down lest a Judgment Day style scenario unfolds), and it looks set to remain so for some time to come. Still, that doesn’t mean no advancements are made in the world of robotics – the Rolling Robot that you see above will not only let it move about most terrain comfortably, but it can also transform into a helicopter when required to get around an obstacle on land. Researchers from the Center for Distributed Robotics at the University of Minnesota have managed to develop this little wonder, and the prototype is extremely fragile for the moment, although they have in mind a successor that will be a whole lot more robust, relying on a non-coaxial system for flight instead.
This is not going to be a cheap toy that you can bring home to surprise Junior as a gift – no sir, the rotor folding mechanism itself costs nearly $20,000 to develop, clearly placing it out of reach of plebians. Perhaps the military might find use for this, as they send mechanical spies to search the land for terrorists in their detached hideouts.