cross oceans

Popular Science has been daydreaming about the flying car for decades. (Seriously, I’ve been to the office. You think an editor is working diligently, and then you glance over his shoulder – and there’s the proof. Dozens of doodles of flying cars.)

In the basement of the Valley Life Sciences Building at the University of California, Berkeley, biologist Michael Dickinson walks down a cinderblock hallway to an anonymous steel door. Beyond it lies a small, windowless room crammed with high-speed video cameras and lasers and computer cables draped as thick as cobwebs. In the center of the room is a glass tank big enough to hold a vending machine. This is Robofly.