Hasta La Ideas

Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center has, quite literally, reinvented the wheel. They’ve developed a shape-shifting, tracked wheel that works as a conventional tire–until a button is pressed, and it reconfigures itself on-the-fly into a tracked triangle:

The RWT (Reconfigurable Wheel-Track) is one of five fancy tricks rolled out by DARPA’s Ground X-Vehicle Technologies program, which “aims to improve mobility, survivability, safety, and effectiveness of future combat vehicles without piling on armor.” Take a look at the other four nifty technologies they’ve developed:

I’m digging the spider-like vehicle with the super suspension, which has a shocking (see what I did there) six feet of travel–42 inches upwards, 30 inches downwards. However, I would definitely throw up inside that windowless vehicle with the teal and magenta road lines on the screen.