The Principals, a studio focuses on industrial design, interactive environments and the influence of new technologies on traditional craftsmanship sent us their latest project: ‘Cosmic Quilt,’ a quilt suspended from on the ceiling, that interacts with users as they approach. Cosmic Quilt was created with the help of 20 students from the Art Institute of New York, a prototype combining technology, sensors, micro controllers and motors, with traditional craft in the form of quilt making.

“The project aims to answer the question ‘What if architecture responded to our presence?’ This project is a realization of our ultimate ambition, which is to design spaces and objects that expand upon our understanding of the built realm without abandoning its history. Soon, just as we can sense a space as calm, contemplative or frenetic … space itself will be able to sense our presence and react accordingly.”

The flyboard is powered by jets of water that are generated by a Sea-Doo watercraft and forced through a tube connected to a platform that Zapata straps his feet into. Zapata, a native of France, pilots the board by using his legs to alter the direction of the pressurized water jets, which allow him to perform a variety of aerial maneuvers, including flips, spins and a series of dives where he imitates a dolphin.

The video titled “One Day …” depicts what a day in the life of a Google glasses-wearer would be like. Shown literally through the eyes of a hip downtown New Yorker, the video starts with the glasses booting up. A series of icons flash into his field of vision, Terminator-style. He checks his calendar and the weather, chats and shares photos with friends in his circles and listens to music.

The glasses are not yet for sale. Google will, however, be testing them in public.
Via [Guardian]

At once beautifully serene and violently foreboding, the interactive work took visitors through three different experiences of flight. The series of 16-foot by 22-foot tall projections had visitors take center stage—transforming their shadows with a succession of Hitchcockian poetic gestures using motion-sensing Kinects. The first panel saw the shadow decompose into a flock of birds, the second had birds swooping down to tear the shadow apart in a scene straight out of Birds (and our worst nightmares), and the third transformed visitors into bird-like creatures with impressive-looking wings.

“In the past, projection mapping worked only from a single, static view point, and thus was very limited. By attaching the PlayStation Move to the camera, we can track projections to screens in real time, enhancing the effect of spatial deformation and false perspective on the projections and allowing viewers to look round (virtual) corners, bend walls, create a hole in the wall, or remove the walls altogether to reveal vast expanses of virtual worlds.”

“This robot is walking down a slope, and its only source of power is potential energy. It doesn’t use any kind of motor or control, so we think it’s very environmentally friendly.”

“The robot has three main parts: thighs, lower legs, and ankles. It’s made of aluminum, and it contains only mechanical components, which have been adjusted so that the robot has the same thigh and leg lengths as a person, and weighs the same.”

In a walking test last year, this robot walked continuously for 13 hours, taking 100,000 steps and going 15 km. That achievement has been listed in the Guinness Book of Records.

“We plan to develop a commercial version with System Instruments, which is exhibiting with us today. We’re thinking of applying the principle this robot uses to walk in sports equipment as well. Also, people who need care or find it hard to walk could wear this robot to help them walk. Right now, we’re at the prototyping stage, as we’d like to release a commercial version in 1-2 years.”

Tel-Aviv University shows the phenomenon of “Quantum Levitation“ using a track around which a superconductor can float. Superconductivity and magnetic fields are like oil and water, they don’t mix. When it can, the superconductor will push out any magnetic fields from the interior in a process called; the Meissner effect. It happens when a sample is cooled below its superconducting transition temperature, where it then cancels out its magnetic flux.

Because of electromagnetic induction (where an electric current is created when a conductor is moved through a magnetic field), a perfect conductor won’t change the magnetic flux when it cruises through at zero resistance. However, when cooled to the superconductor state the magnetic flux is expelled. Now we have perfect diamagnetism – where the interior magnetic field nears zero. At this point, if an external magnetic field is introduced, it will create an opposing magnetic field.
We start with a single crystal sapphire wafer and coat it with a thin (~1µm thick) ceramic material called yttrium barium copper oxide (YBa2Cu3O7-x ). The ceramic layer has no interesting magnetic or electrical properties at room temperature. However, when cooled below -185ºC (-301ºF) the material becomes a superconductor. It conducts electricity without resistance, with no energy loss. Zero.
Superconductivity and magnetic field do not like each other. When possible, the superconductor will expel all the magnetic field from inside. This is the Meissner effect. In our case, since the superconductor is extremely thin, the magnetic field DOES penetrates. However, it does that in discrete quantities (this is quantum physics after all! ) called flux tubes.

We start with a single crystal sapphire wafer and coat it with a thin (~1µm thick) ceramic material called yttrium barium copper oxide (YBa2Cu3O7-x ). The ceramic layer has no interesting magnetic or electrical properties at room temperature. However, when cooled below -185ºC (-301ºF) the material becomes a superconductor. It conducts electricity without resistance, with no energy loss. Zero.
Superconductivity and magnetic field do not like each other. When possible, the superconductor will expel all the magnetic field from inside. This is the Meissner effect. In our case, since the superconductor is extremely thin, the magnetic field DOES penetrates. However, it does that in discrete quantities (this is quantum physics after all! ) called flux tubes.

“Technology enables us to create an appealing green space in an underserved neighborhood,” says Ramsey. The key, he says, is the “remote skylight,” a system that channels sunlight along fiber-optic cables, filtering out harmful ultraviolet and infrared light but keeping the wavelengths used in photosynthesis. “We’re channeling sunlight the way they did in ancient Egyptian tombs, but in a supermodern way.” Ramsey envisions a stand of dozens of lamppostlike solar collectors on the Delancey Street median, feeding a system of fixtures down below.

Via [Observer]

Clay Dillow from POPSCI says:
No man wants to think of his grapes anywhere near the forceful hands of a massive multi-armed machine, but this demo shows just how magnificently precise and steady-handed our robot surgeons can be.

Via [Wired]& [Popsci]

“I was making things with silicone sealants and sawdust, and started using the leftovers around the house,” she says at her east London base. “I modified a knife handle to make it more comfortable. My boyfriend said, ‘Imagine if everyone could do that — like with stiff jam-jar lids.’ It was a great idea.” But it took seven years, two experts and the materials department at Queen Mary, University of London, to create a silicone that would be sticky but would also set rock hard without heating.

Via [Core77]

The future of public transport has finally arrived with Heathrow Airport officially unveiling laser-guided travel pods.
The design was a joint effort between Heathrow’s owners DAA and Manufacturer ULTra PRT to prove the technology could be reliable, efficient, and most importantly, can work around complex existing infrastructure. The 22 electric pod cars replaced two diesel-powered buses that made 216 trips every day. They’re a sound solution for the endless loops that airport transportation must make. Plus, they’re not nearly as expensive as a monorail.


Via [Daily Mail]

Convergence is a project that explores computative techniques in the context of fabrication, a triangulated artwork and an interior element.
I made a attempt to go beyond sculpting a shape by modifying 3d meshes manually in order to bring deeper background to just an isolated formalism.

This project is not a design of a single object. Rather, it’s a design of a process. It represents my personal exploration of various ideas and the connections between them. The aim was to trace these relations and create a logic, which would unite all the ideas so that they merge with each other on different levels of design process. One of the ideas was to achieve the ability to fabricate output using digital breadboarding methods. The fact that we can take any data and process this data through our custom designed logic and then obtain the desired result as an output of this logic is really significant because this approach holds great potential for design projects and interactivity.

The method of geometry generation has common things with morphogenesis of different species and formation of landforms or other structures which occur naturally. The source of input data in this project is the greyscale bitmap image. In order to perform manipulations with surface, “logic” processes this image and defines where the brightest and the darkest parts are. Then it makes gaps according to luminosity levels, displaces the volume and creates the spikes gradient in accordance with recieved values. This logic could be applied to any surfaces regardless are they planar or freeform. This fact and the fact that any source image can be taken for processing and, moreover, parametric control of output results make possible to use this logic in various projects. This is the universality on the level of geometry generation in the context of this project.

Via [Morfae]