This month, a slow-swimming robot known as Spray will attempt to glide roughly 2,484 nautical miles across the Atlantic, from the southern tip of Greenland to the coast of Spain. An autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV, Spray is a joint venture between the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California. When deployed, it will act as an aquatic sentinel, gathering data on temperature, currents and salinity that will help scientists better understand the role of oceans in regulating the global climate.

Leaning from a low-flying helicopter to shoot a fast-moving military boat. Zooming in on a tiny bee equipped with a radio transmitter. Feeling the heat while snapping a car explosion just meters away. These are a few of the adventurous scenarios John B. Carnett has found himself in while on assignment for Popular Science.

Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works, famed for the U-2 and Blackbird spy planes that flew higher than anything else in the world in their day, is trying for a different altitude record: an airplane that starts and ends its mission 150 feet underwater. The Cormorant, a stealthy, jet-powered, autonomous aircraft that could be outfitted with either short-range weapons or surveillance equipment, is designed to launch out of the Trident missile tubes in some of the U.S. Navy's gigantic Cold Warâ€era Ohio-class submarines.