For those who are interested, there are many sources for this story (and related), giving different levels of detail, and making different claims. You can see some of them here, although there are no comments on any of them:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6951470 (wired.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6949089 (phys.org)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6946928 (youtube.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6946485 (youtube.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6946366 (ethz.ch)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6945337 (boingboing.net)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6943508 (theverge.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6942360 (robohub.org)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6942335 (thetechblock.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6941890 (digg.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6941104 (youtube.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5285021 (robohub.org)

This one is different, but clearly related. And it has comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6494517 (kurzweilai.net)

Am I the only one who badly want to buy this from like Kickstarter?