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As a report from the Obama administration warns that one in four bridges in the United States needs significant repair or cannot handle automobile traffic, engineers are employing wireless sensors and flying robots that could have the potential to help authorities monitor the condition of bridges in real time. — ScienceDaily
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
While security is seen as the obvious initial use for Jr., Roambotics has broader plans for the future. Telepresence is one, but the self-directed robot could also be used to spontaneously document social gatherings, or to keep an eye on sick or elderly relatives.
There's also the possibility of using Jr. as a 3D mapping system, effectively turning it into a Google Project Tango camera on wheels.
— slashgear.com
The big catharsis for UCLA Architecture and Urban Design comes by way of RUMBLE, an all-school expo held at the end of the academic year, that includes student work, final reviews, program installations, and lectures. Mixing content from students, practitioners, critics and faculty, the event... View full entry
A team of researchers from Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia are working on another solution: A swarm of tiny robots that could cover the construction site of the future, quickly and cheaply building greener buildings of any size. [...]
"The robots can work simultaneously while performing different tasks, and having a fixed size they can create objects of virtually any scale, as far as material properties permit”
— fastcoexist.com
Check out the Minibuilders in action below: View full entry
A new Tumblr showcases predictions of signage in our future. View full entry
Archinect recently took a field trip to Playa Vista, a quiet community minutes from the ocean in west Los Angeles, to check out UCLA’s new satellite architecture campus, IDEAS. Entirely housed within a 13,000sqft airplane hangar, the campus is used by architecture students in the... View full entry
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
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
Known as M-Blocks, the robots are cubes with no external moving parts. Nonetheless, they’re able to climb over and around one another, leap through the air, roll across the ground, and even move while suspended upside down from metallic surfaces [...]
As with any modular-robot system, the hope is that the modules can be miniaturized: the ultimate aim of most such research is hordes of swarming microbots that can self-assemble, like the “liquid steel” androids in the movie “Terminator II.”
— MIT News
MIT, you've done it again. And again. A team at CSAIL, MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, has developed M-Blocks -- robotic cubes that can self-assemble into practically any configuration, through a system of carefully aligned magnets and flywheels. Even at their... View full entry
Instead of specially engineering spacecraft components to fit into a rocket, NASA could densely pack materials like fiber and polymer into existing spacecraft and create the components while orbiting the planet. This cuts down on cost and opens up the possibility for larger spacecraft. — gigaom.com
Brell-Cokcan and Braumann are co-founders of the Association for Robots in Architecture and organizers of the Rob|Arch 2012 conference, being held in Vienna on Dec. 17 and 18. Over this past weekend they ran a series of workshops in Vienna, Graz, Zürich, Rotterdam, and Stuttgart to expose architects and designers to the possibilities of utilizing this technology. — wired.com
A science project of unprecedented scale begins this month in the New Mexico desert, as a technology firm breaks ground for a model metropolis. Washington-based Pegasus Global Holdings will build a town replete with schools, parks and an airport.
But the intended residents are not people, but robots.
— forumforthefuture.org
Some robots are being trained to do digital design work now. The design-savvy robots in question are part of Southern California Institute of Architecture's (SCI-Arc) Robot House and they're around for the repetitive and extremely detailed movements that human artists find tedious or impossible. So your life of quiet painterly desperation and locavore vegan cocktails is safe for the time being. — blogs.laweekly.com
Here's some info about the Robot House, from SCI-Arc's website. View full entry
Foxconn’s founder and chariman Terry Gou said the company will replace an unspecified amount workers with one million robots in three years. Foxconn is the Asian manufacturer that is responsible for many components inside of Apple, Sony, and Nokia’s devices. — 9to5mac.com
For a related discussion check The Diminishing Returns of Technology. View full entry
