[December 11, 1972] Astronaut Eugene A. Cernan, Apollo 17 mission commander, makes a short checkout of the Lunar Roving Vehicle during the early part of the first Apollo 17 extravehicular activity (EVA-1) at the Taurus-Littrow landing site.
This view of the “stripped down” Rover is prior to loadup. This photograph was taken by Geologist-Astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt, Lunar Module pilot. The mountain in the right background is the East end of South Massif.
Dutch Architecture and design studio HofmanDujardin have developed an innovative window that morphs into a balcony at the push of a button.
The award-winning design has progressed beyond the prototype phase and is currently in production with the first models slated for select apartments in Amsterdam.
The balcony was engineered by French manufacturer Kawneer France and consists of durable, all-weather materials. Kawneer France is managing production, sales and distribution of the Bloomframe.
Bloomframe has won countless design awards including: Janus Award 2015; 1st prize Wallpaper Design Award 2009; Red Dot Design Award 2008; 1st prize Audi Design Award 2008; New York Times Top 10 Best Ideas 2008.
Holoportation is a new type of 3D capture technology that allows high quality 3D models of people to be reconstructed, compressed, and transmitted anywhere in the world in real-time
Microsoft’s Holoportation is a new type of 3D capture technology that allows high-quality 3D models of people to be reconstructed, compressed and transmitted anywhere in the world in real-time.
When combined with mixed reality displays such as HoloLens, this technology allows users to see, hear, and interact with remote participants in 3D as if they are actually present in the same physical space. Communicating and interacting with remote users becomes as natural as face-to-face communication.
Check out the cool demo video below and watch out for Sergio’s grand entrance at 0:13. I have mo idea what he’s doing but it looks funny!
When you step in your heel hits a sensor and the system will auto tighten. Then there are two buttons on the side to tighten and loosen.
Nike unveiled their 1st Generation power lacing shoe yesterday the Nike HyperAdapt 1.0. “When you step in, your heel will hit a sensor and the system will automatically tighten,” explains Tiffany Beers, Senior Innovator, NIKE, Inc., and the project’s technical lead. “Then there are two buttons on the side to tighten and loosen. You can adjust it until it’s perfect.”
Check out the embedded videos below to see the shoes in action.
“Adaptive lacing” as Nike calls the technology, is years in the making. The team first came up with a snowboard boot featuring an external generator. While far from the ideal, it was the first of a series of strides toward their original goal: to embed the technical components into such a small space that the design moves with the body and absorbs the same force the athlete is facing. [source]
The Nike HyperAdapt 1.0 is the company’s first step into adaptive performance. It’s currently manual (i.e., athlete controlled) but it makes feasible the once-fantastic concept of an automated, nearly symbiotic relationship between the foot and shoe.
The Nike HyperAdapt 1.0 will be available only to members of Nike+ beginning Holiday 2016 in three colors. To become a Nike+ member and sign up for notifications about the Nike HyperAdapt 1.0, go to Nike.com.
At this year’s Geneva International Motor Show, Goodyear unveiled a concept tire dubbed the Eagle-360. The spherical, 3-D printed tire is aimed at the long-term future when autonomous driving is expected to be more mainstream, allowing for what they call ‘ultimate manoeuvrability’
At this year’s Geneva International Motor Show, tire manufacturer Goodyear unveiled a concept tire dubbed the Eagle-360. The spherical, 3-D printed tire is aimed at the long-term future when autonomous driving is expected to be more mainstream, allowing for what they call ‘ultimate manoeuvrability’.
The concept tire also features sensors that communicated road and weather conditions to the vehicle’s control system. According to a recent study from Navigant Research, 85 million autonomous-capable vehicles are expected to be sold annually around the world by 2035.
You can read more about this concept tire through Goodyear’s official press release. You can also check out the embedded vid below of this wild concept.
Coined as the ‘Superman memory crystal’, data is recorded via self-assembled nanostructures created in fused quartz
Using nanostructured glass, scientists from the University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) have developed the recording and retrieval processes of five dimensional (5D) digital data by femtosecond laser writing.
The storage allows unprecedented properties including 360 TB/disc data capacity, thermal stability up to 1,000°C and virtually unlimited lifetime at room temperature (13.8 billion years at 190°C) opening a new era of eternal data archiving. [source]
The technology was first experimentally demonstrated in 2013. Documents are recorded using ultrafast laser, producing extremely short and intense pulses of light. The file is written in three layers of nanostructured dots separated by five micrometres (one millionth of a metre).
The self-assembled nanostructures change the way light travels through glass, modifying polarisation of light that can then be read by combination of optical microscope and a polariser, similar to that found in Polaroid sunglasses. [source]
Coined as the ‘Superman memory crystal’, as the glass memory has been compared to the “memory crystals” used in the Superman films, the data is recorded via self-assembled nanostructures created in fused quartz. The information encoding is realised in five dimensions: the size and orientation in addition to the three dimensional position of these nanostructures.
Major documents from human history such as Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Newton’s Opticks, Magna Carta and Kings James Bible, have been saved as digital copies that could survive the human race.
In SUR-FAKE, artist Antoine Geiger shows cell phones literally sucking in the faces of their owner. The 20-year-old French photographer has grown up in digital age and you can read his artist statement on the project on his website (it’s in French).
For more from Geiger, be sure to check him out at the links below.
“En L’An 2000” is a series of images created by Jean-Marc Côté and other French artists that imagined what life would be like in the year 2000.
En L’An 2000 was a series of French images created by Jean-Marc Côté and other artists that imagined what life would be like in the year 2000.
According to the Public Domain Review, the artworks were first produced in 1899 (for the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris) and subsequently in 1900, 1901 and 1910. They were first produced as paper card inserts in cigarette and cigar boxes and later as postcards.
There are at least 87 known cards and they only came to light decades later when science-fiction author Isaac Asimov chanced upon them in 1986, publishing the works with commentary in a book entitled, Futuredays: A Nineteenth Century Vision of the Year 2000.
For those interested, you can find 51 of the 87 artworks on Wikimedia Commons.
Reddit user yaph (Ramiro Gómez) created the above chart of the 30 most edited Wikipedia articles of all time, running a query to see which articles had the most revisions from the launch of Wikipedia on January 15, 2001 until March 27, 2015. Yaph used Matplotlib, a python 2D plotting library, to generate the data.
While the chart above shows the 30 most edited articles that regular users typically see, there are also active ‘talk pages’ on Wikipedia where editors discuss edits and revisions. Below you will find the 30 most edited Wikipedia ‘talk pages’ of all time.
A miniature robotic device that can fold-up on the spot, accomplish tasks and disappear by degradation into the environment promises a range of medical applications.
A miniature robotic device that can fold-up on the spot, accomplish tasks, and disappear by degradation into the environment promises a range of medical applications but has so far been a challenge in engineering.
This work presents a sheet that can self-fold into a functional 3D robot, actuate immediately for untethered walking and swimming, and subsequently dissolve in liquid.
In the video below you can see this remarkable robotic breakthrough in action.
ICRA is the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society’s flagship conference and is a premier international forum for robotics researchers to present their work. The 2015 conference was held from May 26-30, 2015 at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle, Washington, USA.
The developed sheet weighs 0.31g, spans 1.7 cm square in size, features a cubic neodymium magnet, and can be thermally activated to self-fold.
Since the robot has asymmetric body balance along the sagittal axis, the robot can walk at a speed of 3.8 body-length/s being remotely controlled by an alternating external magnetic field. [source]
The robot is controlled using an external magnetic field exerted by embedded coils underneath the robot. Equipped with just one permanent magnet, the robot features a lightweight body yet can perform many tasks reliably despite its simplicity.
The minimal body materials enable the robot to completely dissolve in a liquid environment, a difficult challenge to accomplish if the robot had a more complex architecture. [source]
The robot is capable of conducting basic tasks and behaviors, including swimming, delivering/carrying blocks, climbing a slope, and digging. This study is the first to demonstrate that a functional robotic device can be created and operated from the material level, promising versatile applications including use in vivo.
The team’s future work involves combining the conductive robot body with self-folding sensors to achieve a higher level of autonomy and more versatility in function. [source]
