Ars talks with Hod Lipson about “sailing west” into the uncharted waters of robotics. Click for transcript. (video link)

Research has traditionally been broken down along simple lines. There’s basic, fundamental research into how the world works, and there’s applied research that attempts to take these insights and make something useful out of them. The two have very different end goals and require very different approaches to the research process.

But there’s a large gray area in between, where the approach is more applied but the end goal may be little more than “make something cool”: things like tiny flying robots or 3D computer displays that rely on beads levitated by lasers. How do researchers find direction for these open-ended engineering challenges?