原创 A robot that could actually fly like a bird

The amount of stuff I know nothing about  always astounds me. Of course I don't actually know all of the things of which I'm unaware. However, it seems that every day I hear about something that blows me away and makes me say "Wow, I didn't know anything about that!"

For example, have you heard about the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conferences? Apparently TED (www.ted.com) has been running since 1984, but I knew nothing about it until today. Here's a small snippet of what they say on their website:

TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences – the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh UK each summer – TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and TED Conversations, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize.

The annual TED conferences, in Long Beach/Palm Springs and Edinburgh, bring together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes or less).

On TED.com, we make the best talks and performances from TED and partners available to the world, for free. More than 900 TED Talks are now available, with more added each week. All of the talks are subtitled in English, and many are subtitled in various languages. These videos are released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence, so they can be freely shared and reposted.

So what sort of talks are we talking about (no pun intended)? Well, the only one I've seen thus far is about a robot bird. Here's a link to see a video of this talk, as part of which the bird flies around the auditorium.

This really is quite amazing. Something like this bird would be available only in the realm of science fiction in the not-so-distant past. I bet the descendants of these little scamps will be zipping around all over the place by the time I'm an old man (which will be sometime next week the way things are going at the minute [grin]). And remember that they say that more than 900 TED talks are available ... this could keep me busy for a long, long time...