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Public arts initiative Laka has launched their 2015 competition: Architecture that Reacts. The ideas competition invites architects, designers, engineers, biologists, and interdisciplinary teams worldwide to submit their interpretations of the theme: Architecture that Reacts. Like a living... View full entry
Despite its odd appearance, the Gimball is the first collision-tolerant drone that could prove itself useful in a variety of applications, from everyday tasks to hazardous situations. Designed by Flyability, the Gimball recently won a $1 million prize in the UAE's Drones for Good international... View full entry
City Hall. It's traditionally the place where technology gets stuffed into a drawer and forgotten. But as budgets recover from the Great Recession and smartphone-toting citizens prod municipal officials, cities are now more Boston Dynamics than Boss Tweed. Soon the pols will be promising sensor-driven pots that cook the chicken for you, just the way you like it. — wired.com
Are you in a hurry to catch your flight and still need to find a parking place? Meet Ray, a shiny robot that parks your car at Düsseldorf Airport in Germany.
Ray makes sure you don’t have to park miles away from the terminal, eliminating the hassle of finding a parking place. Just drop off your car within a few meters from the check-in area [...]. When you come back from a holiday or business trip, the robot will make sure your car is ready to go when you walk out of the airport.
— popupcity.net
Birds have remarkable flight capabilities...They make it look effortless, but engineering a drone to do the same is anything but. It’s a major engineering feat to harness the evolutionary talents of a bird and translate them into a robot that can deliver packages to your doorstep. By understanding how birds have mastered the ability to swoop and dive, [Stanford professor David] Lentink and his team [of mechanical engineers] hope to inform microdrone design. — Al Jazeera
Similar to biomimicry (and its correspondent field of architectural thinking), bio-inspired design takes it cues from biological systems, although it entails simplification, enhancement and non-mimetic adaptation of observed phenomena rather than replication. Bio-inspired robotics, specifically... View full entry
"Robotic Building Construction by Contour Crafting" by educator Behrokh Khoshnevis of the University of Southern California was named the grand prize winner of the Create the Future Design Contest for 2014. Launched in 2002 by the NASA Tech Briefs magazine publishers, the contest was created to encourage and honor innovation from engineers, students, and entrepreneurs worldwide. — bustler.net
Contour Crafting (CC) has received attention for its ability to 3D-print complete large-scale structures. In reducing time and cost of construction, CC could also be another potential solution for, say, reliable emergency housing in a post-disaster situation or even building structures on the... View full entry
While still experimental, engineering techniques drawn from origami promise the development of pop-up devices that could assemble themselves from flat, composite materials cheaply and efficiently, the [Harvard and MIT] researchers said. Potential applications range from self-assembling satellites to shape-shifting robots that could be used in search-and-rescue missions. — online.wsj.com
Researchers at Harvard University and MIT have engineered a self-assembling paper robot inspired by the Japanese paper-folding artform origami. Since the journal Science published the report yesterday, the bots have been widely described as the "world's first Transformer."On that note, paper... View full entry
The disaster at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant marked the beginning of the "Robotics Challenge." Developers were rankled by how helpless robots were as they wandered through the radioactively contaminated reactor building. As they swerved around aimlessly in the steam, cables broke and the operators lost contact with the robots. [...]
They compiled a list of eight tasks that robots would have to master in the future to be capable of performing well in disaster response.
— spiegel.de
In light of the upcoming prestigious ICON Magazine Awards 2013 taking place on Dec. 5 at the Oval Space in East London, we're excited to feature industrial design studio RoboFold, who is one of this year's "Emerging Design Studio" nominees.
Before RoboFold's establishment in 2007 at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London, Gregory Epp — who was a student there — spent more than a decade researching curved folding techniques.
— bustler.net
“Arum” Sculpture by Zaha Hadid Architects. Image: Matthias Urschler. “Infinity” Sculpture by Stathis Lagoudakis. Image: Tracy Woodford. View full entry
The Principals, a Greenpoint-based design studio, set off to explore that intersection of interactive design and technology with an art installation for MoMA PS1's summer Warm Up series. Hit the jump to see how the Spatium Yamamoto installation grooved to the beat for an unforgettable, psychedelic experience this past summer. — Inhabitat
The Principals presented their latest interactive installation closing out MoMA PS1's Summer Warm Up series. View full entry
Amelia Taylor-Hochberg, Editorial Manager for Archinect, traveled to Aedes Network Campus Berlin as a fly-on-the-wall, and reported back with 7 Lessons from the 3rd International Architectural Education Summit. These were; 1) The relevancy of the “Architect” is fleeting, 2) Kids... View full entry