Innovation Award to Amazen' Hat Commander video game

Last Weekend in Stuttgart took place the first GAMEDEV HACKATHON, a competition about making a computer game within two days. Me and Raphael Lang attend and in the place we team up with Guz Gutmann from ambient robotics. The game we develop for this competition explores new ways of interaction, giving the players not only the chance to control the character (which in our case was a little red spherical starship) but also the environment on which the action take place. The goal of the game is go from one end of a linear maze to the other. Pretty simple isn't it, well the things get trickier when that line is magnified 100x by a microscope and shown in a TV, then the picture is recorded by a web cam and processed by Grasshopper which renders it now in a Rhino environment as a tridimentional landscape. The Hat, by another hand, controls the little red spherical starship through bending its vertical antenna. The antenna consist in a flex sensor which signal es processed by Arduino and sent to the PC, where the serial output is taken by Grasshopper to control the left or right direction of the starship.    

Unexpectedly, we receive the award for the Most Innovative Game Concept. Among the judges appreciation were statements like: 
"When I enter the room it this weird stuff call immediately my attention, so i had to go and check what it was"
" It looks fucking awesome!!"
" I could play it for hours"


Now i leave this demo video so you can check what is it about.

you can also check the event facebook:http://www.facebook.com/HackathonStg
or Website at:http://www.hackathon-stuttgart.de/

The personal mobility turning point

This video is a quite interesting trip through the personal mobility history focused on describing how we found ourselves in the turning point of this industry. The arguments for this claim are the upcoming electrical technologies and material that are now being introduce in the develop of personal mobility devices, the longer performance of electrical batteries and the reduction of their sizes as well as the incorporation of high sensitive capabilities have opened broadly the spectrum of possibilities for imagining and realize new ways of interacting with the vehicles, new uses for them and, the most relevant issue, new categories of vehicles. Since the foundation of this industry both the morphology and the configuration of personal mobility vehicles has remain pretty much the same until recently devices like the SEGWAY and the Honda's U3-X (the main character of this video) have overlook the the idea that a personal vehicle has to be a car or a bike or, if you are an eccentric driver, a tricycle to bring a new category of self-balancing vehicles, and altogether opening a hole new branch in the mobility industry.

The proliferation of new devices in this area has already begun, and we can count now with transitional hybrids like one-wheeled motorcycles or Segway like devices for off road but the disruption of personal mobility it is far from being exhausted and I guess we will witness the arise of other new categories on which the power storage technology and the active sensitive capacity as well as the new ways of human vehicle interaction will have a main role.

From the Design point of view, being involved in this turning point means a bit more than just to make these new devices more aesthetically appealing or user friendly; it means also to imagine, research and prototype new ways to communicate the human will to an electromechanical device so the relationship between them can become more intuitive and responsive.

That's it for now, by the way, this video is produced by Gizmag and you can read the hole article here.

Enjoy

James Dyson:Design what it should be

James Dyson, founder of Dyson corporation and responsible for the world famous machine looking vacuum cleaners, share his achievements and inspirations in a relaxed show-and-tell talk called ''the art of engineering'' at MIT. Dyson, graduated from the Royal College of Art, tell the story of how he went into engineering and how important it is not to be only a Designer or a Engineer, but to be a Designer/Engineer, and inventor as he said, and the relevance to make mistakes: ''...I think the schools got all wrong, they should be giving good grades to the ones that makes mistakes and learn from them.'' something that himself take to the limit, for his first cyclone vacuum cleaner he spend almost 5 years and did 5,126 prototypes!

The British inventor also criticized the definition of Design as a marketing tool arguing a more meaningful and systemic view that he inherit from one of his heroes, Buckminster Fuller, from whom also borrow the beautiful advice: ''...you see what needs to be done and do it.''

At he end of the talk, in Q&A, he discuss how he manage the creative processes within his organization and how he see the future regarding the rising of the new Asian productive power. Surely an invigorating example of how to make you way through with a huge accent on innovation.

The hard side of Opensource

Arduino The Documentary (2010) English HD from gnd on Vimeo.

Opensource is probably the most philosophically relevant idea coming from the computer sciences. Actually the idea of sharing knowledge it's, of course, not new but it the age on which patent and rights have drag the technical knowledge to a exclusive corporate corner sharing information about how things work it's a revolutionary endeavor. In a good metaphor expressed in this documentary the Opensource is compared with Gutenberg's movable type printer. Before Gutenberg the production of books were in hands of a few, mostly cleric,that controlled what could be read, hence what could be know, after him the amount and more important the variety of books explode given the people the chance of build themselves for themselves a body of knowledge to understand the world. Gutenberg's printer was a very important piece of Open hardware that boost society into a new direction.

Today we are confronting a similar scenario. We are surrounding by technological devices like cellphones, computers, consoles, mp-players, etc. That we barely know how to use and we are even less inform about how they actually works. This disinformation has huge consecuenses in a world on which the number of this kind of devices may be even bigger than the actual population. Think on what is lost every time that a computer or a cellphone goes to the trash, maybe the system as a whole doesn't work but, what about all those little parts that give life to that cellphone or that computer? what if we can do something with those parts? what if we can play and tinker with that old low resolution cellphone camera or that screen? what about the spinning wheel of that broken mouse or the optics of that old digital camera? the possibilities are amazingly wide. For doing that we need knowledge and tools, but as we know big part of the knowledge comes from playing with the tools and here is where Arduino comes into scene. this piece of very cheap and non-exclusive piece of hardware is the tool which allow us to start connecting all those little parts and give them a purpose, whatever this purpose would be. Here is the potential of this little device that have been revolutionizing the digital world, and the revolution consist on materialize the digital world itself for sake of fun, what purpose beautiful and productive than that.

Following fun and with the help of Opensource tools as Arduino and Processing amazing things have come to life like 3d printers that cost little more than a thousand dollars or new music instrument and a lot of new robots. Opensource tools like Arduino bring down the technical threshold of electronic devices world to a level that allow not specialized people to start to interact in a expressive and creative way with it, and the best part... in a social way too, because is not about what I can do and how I can make profit out of that (not only at least) but what We can do and how we take this thing into the next level.

Opensource means sharing knowledge, and sharing knowledge means better and faster understanding and develop of communities. It may not be new but as a movement based on the technologies that are changing the face of our daily living surely, is a philosophy to adopt.

Challenges of future design

In this video Hamilton Smith, part of the team that develop the first synthetic cell, talk with Noy Bassik about building machines in the scale of a cell. Two basic ideas are discuss in this conversation, the first one coming from Smith is to build living machines through the alteration of a already existing organism. This mean build a purpose-full device out of the essential biological parts, DNA. In the other side is the vision of Bassik that pursuit the develop of machines that interact with the chemical world of biology. What he's doing is engineer devices that can be controlled by chemical reactions fulfill a purpose. The purpose of this machines is now in the level of mechanical effects but -as they discuss- is projected to be a lot more than that, a complete factory that can sense and react producing and delivering substances needed by the organism.

Now in the eye of a Designer this may look really far away from our expertise area but there is some hints that can give us a second look. First the formal level, the technique worked by

Bassik is inspire in Origami and from this ancient art the idea of build volume out of a flat surface is drawn to research with the out coming of relevant insights to control materials through shape. This imply that formal thinking is needed in the conception of this new kind of machines and designer at above all formal thinkers. Another component of the thinking process of Design can take us into a deeper level, this is the behavioral awareness. Is well know that in Design practice the biggest tool is Observation, observation of people and their conducts, of systems and their components and relations between them, of causes and effects, actually of whatever is involved in the studied situation. This tool in combination with the problem solving thinking of engineers brings about comprehensive solutions that almost in every field of the building-things human endeavor has drive innovation. With the develop of techniques that enables to build thing in the micro scale we are entering in a new stage of technology and the products of this new phase will progressively increase in complexity, when this start to happen it will be necessary the knowledge and the thinking on how the outcome of the process of this machines will affect the whole system, in simpler words, how the behavior of this devices will cause effects on the other component of the system, as the non-micro scale devices affect us and the environment today.

Some of this worries have already take in hands of designers as in Nanotopia or in Victimless leather presented mainly as Art projects but in the way that this technologies star to permeate more deeply our cultures and our daily life the need for a technical and reflective presence of design will be more critical. So, maybe it's time to aim for the future and involve Design in the next technological revolution, design at micro scale.

World quality innovation alliance: Fraunhofer Institute in Chile

Chile will have the first research center in South America of one of the most innovative research institutions in the world, The Fraunhofer Institut. The largest research institute in Europe is focused on transforming scientific expertise into applications of practical utility. Funded in part by public grants and mostly by privates contracts the Fraunhofer institute brings to Chile a new model of research that institutionalize the cooperation between the industry and the fundamental research institutions as the universities. The aim of this institute is to develop product starting from basic science all the way to commercial maturity, it's the link between invention and commercialization, what we can say is an innovation machine.

The research center projected in Chile will address the System Biotechnology and will work in agriculture, aquaculture and sustainable use of natural resources, boosting up big part of our raw material economy. Some of the partners in this alliance are Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Universidad de Talca and Fundacíon Chile; and it is cofounded by INNOVAchile.

Maybe is too much to ask but now that we have cover the agriculture and aquaculture it may be good to start thinking on address forestry and minery, and how we can jump into develop and commercialization products in this areas to give our resources more value and leave behind the raw material economy.

More information click here

Paper towels for oil spills: MIT researchers unveil autonomous oil-absorbing robot

MIT researchers unveil autonomous oil-absorbing robot

see also

The Plenitude of Rich Gold

Some weeks ago I went in a local bookstore just to kill some time , and after take a quick look into the shelves a small green spine cath my attention in the design theorie area (after that I notice that theorie books even when it comes to design, are usually graphically bored). I take it from the shelf and just there another two things call my interest. First, all the cover was illustrated with doodles that looks like made by a school kid -a thing that I found clever in a bookshelf full of elaborated computer renderings- very warm and very beautiful. The second thing was ''foreword by John Maeda'' writen under the autors name, Rich Gold. Then when I went into the book, to my surprise I didn't found any pictures, any renders, any oversimplify diagrams, nothing but words..and CARTOONS! yes cartoons. Every chapter or section starts with a cartoon, and also every main idea on the book is stressed with a cartoon. There is a cartoon to explain the overstuffed enviroment in wich we live that Gold calls ''the plenitude'', there is also a cartoon that show clearly the four disciplines (and professions pursuit by the autor) that have the responsability of around 97% of the plenitude, there is a cartoons to explain the seven path of innovation, the five problems of the Plenitude and the seven solutions for that; and even for explain how the Plenitude of ones is based in the poverty of others.

After been exposed to that amount of quality information two thoughts came to my mind, cartoons rules and I have to reed this book.

The book is about thing, or better say Stuff. What it is, from where it comes, where it goes, how we can deal with it and why we need to be sorrounded by this thing call ''the plenitude'' (after write this post I'm not sure anymore if this book it's really about ''stuff'')

The Plenitude, Creativity, Innovation and Making Stuff

autor: Rich Gold (foreword by John Maeda)

pages:111

the MIT press

Building organs block by block

Building organs block by block
Analogy can go a little bit further than a create a juicer looking like a tin-tin spaceship, and a little bit useful too.
When everybody is thinking in cell printers to do 3D tissues structures -with everybody I don't mean you, me or the next door neighbour, but the biotechnology research community- a guy came with the idea of making bricks out of cells, like legos! and then he call this technique with the awesome name of ''micromasonry''. With this new concept Javier Gomez Fernandez (who has to be someones neighbour)put in every lab the the chance to build this kind of structures without depend on advance motion control technology. Big point for creative thinking in science.