Advances in robotics are entering a new phase of complexity, including in the essential balance feedback response area of research, which is essential to mobility. Check out HERMES, as just one example:

The researchers worked with HERMES, a 100-pound biped robot designed by the MIT team, along with the interface, for disaster response. They envision deploying HERMES to a disaster site, where the robot would explore the area, guided by a human operator from a remote location. The researchers will present a paper on the interface at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in September. MIT's two-legged robot is wreaking controlled havoc: punching through drywall, smashing soda cans, kicking over trash buckets, and karate-chopping boards in half. The robots actions, however, are not its own. Just a few feet away, PhD student Joao Ramos stands on a platform, wearing an exoskeleton of wires and motors.

Ed note: I propose building two of these things, and then having the two researchers/controllers fight it out.

While companies look to deliver packages in a matter of minutes using drone technology, NASA engineers are exploring ways to bring similar "on-demand mobility" to people. In less than a decade, small commuter airlines could be flying electric planes. And as aircraft design and battery technology progress to extend even greater ease of use to the public, the sky would literally become the limit.

A key technology that NASA and its commercial partners are developing to help drive the future toward such personal air vehicles, as well as vastly improve general-aviation aircraft and commercial delivery services, is called "distributed electric propulsion." It's a rapidly evolving technology that Moore says is the biggest shift in aerospace technology since the invention of the turbine engine. By using battery-powered motors to turn compact propellers distributed along an aircraft's wing, he said, a plane becomes easier to handle, lighter, less noisy and more environmentally friendly. Demonstrator tests are showing as much as a 500 percent reduction in the energy needed to perform a high-speed cruise. It can also perform better in a tricky vertical take-off or landing.