This Week's Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through December 10th)

ROBOTICS: MIT's Modular Robotic Chain Is Whatever You Want It to Be Evan Ackerman IEEEE Spectrum "If you can get all of the communication and coordination figured out, though, a modular system offers tons of advantages: robots that come in any size you want, any configuration you want, and that are exceptionally easy to repair and reconfigure on the fly. MIT's ChainFORM is an interesting take on this idea: it's an evolution of last year's LineFORM multifunctional snake robot that introduces modularity to the system..." "What is increasingly called'artificial intelligence,' both inside the tech industry and the media, is more artificial than intelligent. Everyone talks about it, and no one agrees on what it actually means. This leads to the question: What is'AI'? Perhaps the question should instead be: What problems are new technologies trying to solve?" SPACE: John Glenn, American Hero of the Space Age, Dies at 95 John Noble Wilford The New York Times "In just five hours on Feb. 20, 1962, Mr. Glenn joined a select roster of Americans whose feats have seized the country's imagination and come to embody a moment in its history, figures like Lewis and Clark, the Wright brothers and Charles Lindbergh."