The German company, Festo, has a history of making incredible, biomimetic robots in their laboratories. We have featured kangaroos, dragonflies, and jellyfish in the past. They’ve also made Air-Penguins, Air-Ray, robotic birds, and the Airacuda. The butterfly may seem less ambitious than those efforts, but the butterflies can swarm in the air while avoiding collisions.
Each butterfly weighs a little over an ounce and has a wingspan of 20 inches. They consist of nothing more than a couple of motors, batteries, infrared markers, and soft, elastic wings.
The robots were not developed to sell but represent continued research efforts towards making ultralight, networked robotics systems. I think the company should focus on these creations and move them to market. I want one!
The Danish designer, Verner Panton (1926–1998), brought the future to 1960’s and 1970’s interior design. His signature work, Visiona 2, was a fantasy landscape constructed for the 1970 Furniture Fair in Cologne, Germany. The undulating organic forms, made from bright glossy materials, captured the imagination of a free-thinking society. Houses didn’t need separate rooms with individual furniture anymore. Instead, you could lounge on almost any surface.
“Visiona 2 was entirely focused on the question of living in the world of tomorrow. It broke the traditional understanding of space with its clear ascription of functions, instead creating surroundings that were dedicated to well being, communication, and relaxation. For this, Panton designed numerous design objects, including furniture, textiles, lighting, wall and ceiling coverings that formed in highly imaginative arrangements a series of very different spaces. As an integrative component, he developed both a lighting concept and atmospheric sounds for the individual spaces, like the song of a nightingale, the cry of an owl, bee humming, cat howls, or waves.”
Swiss artist Beni Bischoff created these intriguing automobile images by digitally altering photographs of classic cars. The resulting hovercrafts walk a beautiful line between retro and futuristic design… Maybe these concept cars will become the very first models of a new era of hovering transportation.
This vision of the future may not be so terribly far off… Toyota surprisingly announced that they may be planning to build a hovercraft in the near future. Though I doubt it will look as cool as these cars, it’s exciting nonetheless.
The rest of Beni Bischoff’s work is a bit different. It includes sculpture, painting, and other (more disturbing :)) digital manipulations. Check it out here.
Behold the new shape-shifting table created by the folks at the MIT Media Lab. The idea is relatively simple: a camera picks up motion in one place and transmits that motion into a new 3D space using a system of blocks attached to motors. buy viagra pack online https://www.conci.com/wp-content/languages/en/viagra-pack.html no prescription
“A pixel is intangible,” Ishii told Dezeen. “You can only use it through mediating and remote control, like a mouse or a touchscreen. We decided to physically embody computation and information.”
The implications for this technology may be far-reaching. I had a discussion with visual artist Ashley May recently about possibilities to further connect people from a distance. You may already use Skype and FaceTime to have realtime conversations with your friends and family across the world, but currently, there is no way to reach out and physically touch your loved ones. Maybe technology like the shape-shifting table (or its future models) will allow you to hold your friend’s hand, or give them a hug… Distance seems to becoming irrelevant in our ever more connected world.
The watches from Tokyo Flash are not the most practical tools, but that’s not really the point. These devices are meant to stand out from the crowd, make people say: “What the hell is that thing on your wrist!?”
All of the designs below represent a creative new way to represent time.
The Kisai Denshoku Watch
How to Use:
“Twelve light bars present the time in a simple, easy to read format. Press the button and the LEDs behind the acrylic diffuse and illuminate the bars three times. First hours are presented, then groups of ten minutes, then single minutes. The speed of movement can be accelerated by pressing the button again. To find out more about how to read the time, take a look at the interactive manual above.”
Side fact: Denshoku means illumination in Japanese.
Pimp Pimpin aint Easy PU LED Watch
How To Use:
“Reading the time is easy, hours 1-12 are displayed in the left column, from the bottom to the top, minutes from the bottom right, each lit LED representing a single minute. The time can be read more quickly if you look at the numbers on the right, each row of lit LEDs is equal to five minutes. The date can be read in a similar way.”
Side fact: The light-up feature also animates every 2 minutes between 6 pm and 1 am – pimp time.
The Binary LED Watch
How to Use:
“How to read the time: Hours addition : 3rd LED +4th LED (from Left) = 2 + 1 = 3 Minutes addition : 1st LED+ 3rd LED ( from Left) = 32 + 8 = 40 => 03:40 e.g. 2: Hours addition : 1st LED +3rd LED ( from Left) = 8 + 2 = 10 Minutes addition : 1st LED+ 3rd LED + 5th LED ( from Left) = 16 + 8 + 2 = 26 => 10:26”
The Equalizer
How to Use:
“The display pushes up the top row of lights and they float back down in a real equalizer effect, finally all the lights fall down off the face of the watch to leave only two lights to indicate the time for 5 seconds, then the two lights also trail off. ”
Tokyoflash 1000100101 LED Watch
How to Use:
“Straight off the wrist of a Moon Base Commander from a 1960’s Sci-Fi classic, this watch features all the things that you’d expect. Flat metal panel, cryptic flashing lights, carbon fibre style strap and display that looks like it’s gauging your oxygen level.
By looking at the 4 rows of lights, the Green & Red LED’s at the top indicate the hour simply by counting them. 7 red = 7 o’clock.
The Bottom rows of green & yellow LED’s indicate the minutes. 3 Green + 5 yellow = 35 minutes past.”
Tokyoflash Infection LED Watch
How to Use:
“Twenty-seven multi-colored LEDs pulsate and move like cells across the curved face to present the time from beneath the attractive mirrored mineral crystal lens.
Twelve red LEDs indicate hours, eleven yellow LEDs represent the progression of time in groups of five minutes and four green LEDs show single minutes.
A single touch of the upper button animates the LEDs, a single touch of the lower button shows the time immediately.”
One of the very first posts I ever made on RobotSpaceBrain was about Festo’s robotic flying animals (jelly fish, penguins, birds). Their new toy, called the BioniCopter, is modeled after the complex flight pattern of a Dragonfly. buy Bactroban generic rxxbuynoprescriptiononline.com over the counter
The robot only weighs about 175 g and maneuvers with incredible grace. buy bupropion generic rxxbuynoprescriptiononline.com over the counter
It’s supposedly very easy to control as well, using a complex flapping motion handled by the software and electronics, allowing the pilot to use a simple smartphone app to steer the Robotic Dragonfly around in space.
How It Works:
The machine is run by an ARM microcontroller, which calculates all of the parameters relating to mechanical adjustments based on input from its sensors (accelerometers and such). The microcontroller then translates all that useful input information into control commands for the Servo motors so it can flap its wings appropriately.
Here are a few specifications from the Festo site:
General Thoughts:
Truly amazing products keep coming out of the German Festo Laboratories. I am not sure who is buying them, but of course, there are many potential applications for the high-tech flying robots. I am sure the military is keeping close tabs… buy ventolin generic rxxbuynoprescriptiononline.com over the counter
It would be interesting to see if you could scale this up and make a Giant Robotic Dragonfly…
