Julie Alice Chappell, hailing from Portsmouth, UK, creates these intricate insect sculptures from re-purposed computers and video game machines. The parts often come from local dumps, many friends, and organizations that support her work.
Via the artist:
“Whilst watching a nature programme about bio-diversity, one eye on the box of circuit boards, one on the TV, and worrying about my looming major project, I was reminded of the ants in the cupboard and my Eureka moment arrived.
I proceeded to create a museum style entomologist’s cabinet of dioramas, drawers and trays filled with pinned bugs and butterflies. The collection has continued to grow in size and complexity and is constantly evolving as new inspiration is triggered by new finds.”
If you are interested, she sells her work online via Etsy (usually ranging between $100 and $200).
Will Scobie is an artist from Brighton who has worked for a whole host of companies including TED Talks, Skype, IBM, Vine, and Audi. This series of minimalist bugs is called “The Fly, the Spider & the creeper,” and I find it quite delightful. The illustrations are sort of a whimsical mix of technical drawings and graphic design.
Here’s a word from the artist:
“My approach to illustration plays with the idea of the continuous line, whilst maintaining a graphic simplicity and communicating an idea through a playful and optimistic perspective.”
You can pick up prints here or check out more work from Will at his site.
Insects represent over 2/3 of all known organisms and play a vital role in our ecosystem – they pollinate flowers, reintroduce nutrients into the soil, make honey, beeswax, silk, and other useful products. Needless to say, our Earth would be a far more inhospitable place without them.
This achievement is the culmination of over 10 years of work across many laboratories at Harvard. A major challenge has been manufacturing parts at a such a small scale. “We had to develop solutions from scratch, for everything,” explains Robert J. Wood, principal investigator of the RoboBee Project. “We would get one component working, but when we moved onto the next, five new problems would arise. It was a moving target.”
Technical Design
The flight dynamics were inspired by the movement of a fly, with submillimeter-scale anatomy and two wafer-thin wings that flap 120 times/sec.
“The tiny robot flaps its wings with piezoelectric actuators—strips of ceramic that expand and contract when an electric field is applied. Thin hinges of plastic embedded within the carbon fiber body frame serve as joints, and a delicately balanced control system commands the rotational motions in the flapping-wing robot, with each wing controlled independently in real-time. buy viagra super fluox-force online https://healthcoachmichelle.com/wp-content/languages/en/viagra-super-fluox-force.html no prescription
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The control system had to be extremely robust due to the small scales in which the robot operates, and it all has to be mounted on board the flying insect. The team went through approximately 20 prototypes in the last 6 months, but thanks to a revolutionary Pop-Up Manufacturing Process, they were able to build reliable prototypes and test them aggressively.
Next Steps
“Now that we’ve got this unique platform, there are dozens of tests that we’re starting to do, including more aggressive control maneuvers and landing,” says Wood.
After that, the team will work to make the robotic insects fly autonomously and wirelessly. This is involve upgrades to the flight algorithms, power source, and several communication components. buy cialis black online https://healthcoachmichelle.com/wp-content/languages/en/cialis-black.html no prescription
“This project provides a common motivation for scientists and engineers across the university to build smaller batteries, to design more efficient control systems, and to create stronger, more lightweight materials,” says Wood. “You might not expect all of these people to work together: vision experts, biologists, materials scientists, electrical engineers. buy udenafil online https://healthcoachmichelle.com/wp-content/languages/en/udenafil.html no prescription
What do they have in common? Well, they all enjoy solving really hard problems.”
“I want to create something the world has never seen before,” adds co-lead author Kevin Y. Ma. “It’s about the excitement of pushing the limits of what we think we can do, the limits of human ingenuity.”
It will be exciting to see where this technology goes.
For a link to the paper published recently in Science, go here.
-RSB
Photos courtesy of Kevin Ma and Pakpong Chirarattananon
The Ethiopian Caterpillar is an Automaton Mechanical Robot created by Swiss watchmaker Henri Maillardet in 1820. It is covered in rare gold, ornate jewels, and pearls and was sold at Sotheby’s Geneva auction room in 2010 for $415,215 to an Asian buyer.
“The body is realistically designed to represent a caterpillar comprising eleven jointed ring segments, framed by seed pearls, and decorated with translucent red enamel over an engine-turned ground, studded overall with gold-set rubies, turquoise, emeralds,and diamonds. The underside is decorated with champlevé black enamel. When the automaton movement is engaged, the caterpillar crawls realistically, its body moving up and down simulating the undulations of a caterpillar by means of a set of gilt-metal knurled wheels. The automata work is composed of a barrel, cam and two leavers all working together to create the crawling motion.”
Maillardet, it is believed, was one of the only people creating animal automatons in the early 1800s. The creation date puts the age of this caterpillar at almost 200 years. We’ve been making robots for a long time!
Justin Gershenson-Gates is the man behind “A Mechanical Mind” and is responsible for these mechanical insects and arthropods made from antique watches. He breaks the old watches down and then reassembles the parts into these creatures. buy synthroid online langleyrx.com no prescription
Here’s a quote from the artist:
“My aim is to show the beauty of the mechanical world, a place generally hidden from the public behind metal and glass. My pieces display the more delicate and ephemeral side of gears, rather than the cold, hard factory feel they normally portray.”
My favorite of the mechanical creatures is probably the spiders. The glass bulbs make for really great abdomens. I think it would be really great to see a stop-motion animation involving these guys. buy wellbutrin online langleyrx.com no prescription
Maybe something like The Deep from Pes, which I featured last year. But, I’m not sure how much movement the parts of these creatures have, so it may be difficult. buy valtrex online langleyrx.com no prescription
Anyway, if you’re interested, Mr. Gershenson-Gates also makes a lot of jewelry from the recycled watch gears that can be purchased from his Esty page.
And apparently, if you’re living in the Chicago area, you can see these mechanical insects first hand at the Bucktown Holiday Art Show December 8th and 9th, 2012.
