Month: September 2017

Enlarge / The robot is controlled by magnets, so a human is always in the loop. Until we get robots to control the magnets! And then a robot to control the robot who controls the magnets! And then... (credit: Rus, et al.)

It sounds like the ultimate in job-destroying automation: these robots can turn into walkers, swimmers, or gliders, and they are self-assembling. No human hands required for these monsters to go from the road to the air! Only a few small hurdles remain before these bad boys are carrying cargo (or ninjas) across land and sea.

MIT computer scientist Daniela Rus and her team have created a fascinating prototype robot known as Primer that starts out as a little cube controlled by magnetic fields. As you can see in the illustration above, Primer can't move unless a person controls it with magnetic fields beneath the platform. In the video, you can watch it change shape when it bounces onto a special platform. (Note that the video is often speeded up—Primer isn't lightning fast.) There, a thin piece of heat-activated metal folds up around it, creating what Rus calls an origami exoskeleton.

Here, you can see Primer jumping around and turning itself into bigger and more elaborate bots. The little cube is guided by magnetic fields, and the walker bodies fold up when the heating plates under them get warm. Primer even sheds its exoskeleton in water. (video link)

Enlarge / Variety is the spice of life, and Forza Motorsport 7 has a lot of variety. (credit: Turn 10 Studios)

What a time to be a fan of the racing genre. The past few weeks delivered both F1 2017 and Project CARS 2, and, before we've even had time to catch breath, it's time for the latest installment from Turn 10: Forza Motorsport 7. It's aimed at a much wider audience than either a straight F1 game or hardcore sim like Project Cars, and Microsoft has high hopes for this in-house title, even choosing it to showcase the Xbox One X. Before our review copies arrived late on Tuesday night I was wondering how much more there would be to say about such a well-established franchise. After many hours on both Xbox One and Windows, the answer is plenty.

Keeping things fresh

This will be Forza's tenth console outing, including the Horizon games, spanning all three generations of Xboxes. (It's also a Play Anywhere title, which means it works on Windows, too, and both versions are included the price.) In all that time, the underlying principle of the game remains the same: drive cars faster than your opponents, win credits, buy more cars. What elevated some of those past games to greatness was the way they could make you feel like a driving god, capable of superhuman feats behind the wheel.

Forza Motorsport 7 still knows how to make those magic moments, and the return of a number of different tracks and cars gives it the air of a greatest hits compilation. But some of the changes to the gameplay are getting us down (and don't even get Sam started on the topic of in-game loot).