Modular robotics have taken over the New York Times. All the news fit to print now includes a wonderfully conceived series of animated graphics describing the CK bot from the University of Pennsylvania. Hey, we featured the CK Bot in our modular robotics story, with video I may add, a few months ago! Still, we weren’t the first or last to praise CK Bots ability to reform itself after being literally kicked apart. The NY Times online article, which is an amazing story in pictures, is definitely worth checking out. Here’s the link again so go and see this awesome story for yourself!
Blogs are quick and nimble news outlets, but its hard to beat the thoroughness of a major media power like the NY Times. One of the things they do really well is visually demonstrate the module nature of the CK Bot. Each element of the robot gets its own breakaway explanation in the slide show. Just looking at the clarity and flowing transitions fills me with journalistic envy.
Explaining to someone in print about the way that a robot is built of smaller pieces is never as effective as actually showing them the smaller pieces. I’m trying to get the powers that be at Singularity Hub to hire a graphics team so that we can illustrate all of our articles. For some reason that doesn’t seem to be in the budget. In the meantime, I’m just going to drool over the NY Times’ resources and talent. Maybe they’ll illustrate some of the stem cell treatments we’ve talked about next. Hint-Hint.
