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With industrial robotics forecast to be worth $71.72 billion by 2023, it’s no wonder entrepreneurs are turning their attention to increasingly lucrative sectors, like warehouse automation, order fulfillment, and manufacturing.
Tel Aviv-based Intsite is one of the latest examples. The startup today announced a $1.35 million pre-seed round led by Terra Venture Partners and the Israel Innovation Authority to fund what it claims is the world’s first autonomous crane technology.
— Venture Beat
Image: IntsiteAI-powered autonomous construction technology is poised to see enormous growth in the coming years, promising to significantly increase efficiency, cut costs & realization time, and reduce human errors as well as workplace-related injuries. "According to McKinsey, about... View full entry
With Apple's recent release of its latest mobile operating system, iOS 12, we're now seeing new feature releases in a variety of apps. Two players in the world of architectural software, Morpholio Trace and Shapr3D, today announced a joint effort that promises to further bridge the divide between... View full entry
Amazon has made clear that it wants to own the smart home space. Now the company's going a step further, taking a stake in a start-up that's building actual homes.
On Tuesday, Amazon said its Alexa Fund invested in Plant Prefab, a Southern California company that says it uses sustainable construction processes and materials to build prefabricated custom single- and multifamily houses. The start-up is aiming to use automation to build homes faster and bring down costs.
— CNBC
With this recent investment in eco-friendly prefabricated home factory Plant Prefab, Amazon uses its mighty financial leverage and dominance in the market for voice-controlled connected devices to make the brand just as synonymous with smart homes as it already is with online retail. Plant... View full entry
Today you can have a fully connected home complete with sensors to monitor temperature, humidity, air quality, energy usage, and more, and check in on almost any appliance from anywhere in the world with just a smartphone. But even with all of the various connected appliances, virtual assistants, and copious sensors that can be installed in a modern smart home, the “smart” side of things is still rather lacking. — The Verge
The Verge senior editor Dan Seifert asks: Wouldn't it be cool if my home could figure everything out on its own? View full entry
A team made up of researchers at Shizuoka University and other institutions is set to conduct an experiment in September for a project to develop a "space elevator" connecting Earth and a space station by cable -- attracting attention as a possible dream vehicle for space travel and cargo shipments in the future. — The Mainichi
The idea of a space elevator has been around since 1895 when Russian/Soviet rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (inspired by the newly erected Eiffel Tower in Paris) envisioned a very long cable running from earth's equator to space beyond geostationary orbit with a counterweight at the top... View full entry
The first building to win the RIBA Stirling Prize – Hodder Associates’ Centenary Building for the University of Salford – could be converted into a new primary school.
The plans for the currently empty 23-year-old building form part of 5plus Architects’ emerging 99ha development framework for the university’s existing campus and surrounding area.
— Architects' Journal
Hodder + Partners's Centenary Building for the University of Salford was the first to be awarded the RIBA Stirling Prize back in 1996. Originally designed to be the School of Electrical Engineering, during construction plans changed for the building to house the Faculty of Art and Design... View full entry
A venture firm and a major taxi company began trials of passenger-carrying autonomous taxi services on Monday with an eye on launching the full service around 2020 when Tokyo hosts the Olympics and the Paralympics.
ZMP Inc., a Tokyo-based developer of autonomous driving technology, and Hinomaru Kotsu Co., said they are the first in the world to offer autonomous taxi services to fare-paying passengers in the test through Sept. 8.
— Japan Times
Other tech companies and automakers have also been testing autonomous driving services in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. If the Tokyo RoboCar MiniVan trial is successful, officials hope to scale up the program to assist with the increased transportation demand during the 2020 Summer Olympics and... View full entry
Cut peat blocks were already being used for building houses thousands of years ago. Now, scientists at the University of Tartu have developed a material which could make it possible to print energy-efficient houses out of milled peat and oil shale ash using a 3D printer. — Research in Estonia
"As peat and oil shale ash are not very expensive, house builders would be especially happy about the price of the material. According to Liiv, scientists calculated that the cost for the construction of a house shell printed from this material with a floor surface of 100–150 square meters could... View full entry
Facebook is doubling its presence in London by acquiring office space across two buildings in King's Cross.
The 600,000 square feet (56,000 square meters) of office space will be enough for more than 6,000 workstations. [...]
The expansion follows the 2017 opening of its site at Rathbone Place, which added 800 jobs and opened its first in-house incubator program for startup businesses. It also has a location on Brock Street.
— CNET
Considerably ramping up its workplace capacity by 611,000 sq ft in soon-to-be post-Brexit London, Facebook will be moving into new buildings at King's Cross: 11 and 21 Canal Reach, designed by Bennetts Associates, the ten and twelve-story-buildings already have detailed planning permission, as... View full entry
Their cell generated a current stronger than any previously recorded from such a device, and worked as efficiently in dim light as in bright light.
This innovation could be a step toward wider adoption of solar power in places like British Columbia and parts of northern Europe where overcast skies are common. With further development, these solar cells—called “biogenic” because they are made of living organisms—could become as efficient as the synthetic cells used in conventional solar panels.
— University of British Columbia
While this isn't the first effort to build biogenic, bacteria-powered solar cells, scientists at the University of British Columbia claim to have discovered a novel, highly cost-effective, and much more sustainable way to use the photosynthesis capabilities of certain bacteria to convert light... View full entry
MIT Media Lab’s Mediated Matter group has invented a new way to 3D print any object, regardless of how complex it is, with color and shape as detailed as a photograph. It’s the equivalent of traditional CMYK printing, but in 3D. The results are stunning. — fastcodesign.com
MIT Media Lab has come up with a new method of 3D printing that allows for much more complex models and typologies. Such complexity was previously not possible as all pieces of a model had to be connected with no floating parts in space. With this new method, different materials are used to... View full entry
Taken as whimsical follies by the design press and broader culture, Amazon's architectural and logistical patents are altogether more sinister, signalling new, automated urban ambitions. [...]
While some of these patents could be marked as routine publicity stunts, lurking beneath Amazon’s bravado is an obsession with organisation and productivity: oriented towards abstract users, measured in data, and governed by algorithms.
— Failed Architecture
In his piece for Failed Architecture, designer and writer Matthew Stewart investigates the implications of the overwhelming flood of architectural and logistical patents filed by Big Tech, and Amazon in particular, on our cities and expectations of the world of the future. "We’ve been treated... View full entry
A Crunchbase News analysis of residential-focused real estate startups uncovered a raft of companies with a shared and temporary housing focus that have raised funding in the past year or so.
This isn’t a U.S.-specific phenomenon. Funded shared and short-term housing startups are cropping up across the globe, from China to Europe to Southeast Asia.
— TechCrunch
Crunchbase reporter Joanna Glasner takes a look at the new crop of shared and short-term housing startups that have recently raised millions of dollars in funding, such as Common, Starcity, Roomi, Ollie, HubHaus, and others. View full entry
In order to demonstrate the capabilities of a new nanorobotic system, French scientists have built a "microhouse" that sits on the cleaved end of an optical fiber.
The diminutive home was built by a team from the Femto-ST Institute in Besançon, France, using the new μRobotex nanofactory system. That setup utilizes a robotically-controlled ion gun and a gas injection system, operating within a large vacuum chamber, to assemble microstructures on the tips of optical fibers with extreme accuracy.
— New Atlas
The 'Tiny Houses' trend is so passé—Micro Houses are all the rage now. This charming nanobungalow built by the French Femto-ST Institute sits on a plot measuring only 300 by 300 micrometers. Credit: FEMTO-ST InstituteAll you need to get started on your own fun projects is a large vacuum... View full entry
I think we haven’t thought through the challenge of technology for city mobility. We are stuck with some 120-year-old ideas that the industry is desperately holding on to. I tell students: Whenever you hear the word “smart,” beware, because that is somebody who wants to sell as many millions as possible of some new gimmick. And he is not necessarily giving you a better quality of life. — CityLab
Annette Becker and Lessano Negussie, curators of the new exhibition RIDE A BIKE! Reclaim the City at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) in Frankfurt, Germany, interviewed the 81-year-old 'people-friendly city' evangelist for the show's accompanying book. View full entry