Explorers...Ideas for the world to race towards FUTURE...

Even without sailing to distant lands, modern-day scientists and researchers are charting new territory. From new ways to view the stars to robotic cockroaches, this breed of 21st century explorer is making discoveries to advance daily life in the fields of medicine, computers, communication and other areas. One expanding area that fascinates scientists is robotics, especially of the petite variety.



The practical applications for large-scale work by tiny robots exist in many capacities, the MIT researcher said. Sending 2,000 tiny robots to Mars can cover a lot more ground than sending two bigger robots, he said, or the smaller robots could comb battlefields for wounded troops or enemies.

Daily Innovations...

One day, as Chinedu Echeruo was navigating the mind-boggling maze of the New York transit system, he thought there had to be a way to use technology to make it easier.
So he created Hopstop.com, a free Web site offering step-by-step instructions on how to get from point A to point B in the Big Apple via subway, bus or even your own two feet. Instructions can even be delivered to cell phones. The service has expanded to other cities.

Another New York service, Dodgeball.com, aims to keep your social circle spinning. The creators call it "mobile social software." "Let's say you're out having drinks for happy hour with friends and you use your mobile phone to send a text message of your whereabouts to Dodgeball," explained founder Dennis Crowley. "Once you tell [Dodgeball] your location, we'll look up that location. We'll look up a list of who all your friends are and then ping all of those friends with your whereabouts."

Hal McAlister, who has developed advanced astronomy technology through a network of interconnected telescopes, put it this way: "By learning more about the stars, we learn more about our own star and really what gives us here life on Earth."