The Parenting-Battery is a twist to the numerous battery concepts we have seen here on Yanko Design. It basically houses two pencil cells that can be collectively used as one battery. Moreover you can directly recharge the cell thanks to the embedded socket plug. Looks to be a bit complicated to function, but you get the drift, right? The idea is to prolong the useful life of the battery and stay within the eco-friendly parameters.
Designer: Fan Shizhong
– Yanko Design Timeless Designs – Explore wonderful concepts from around the world! Shop CKIE – We are more than just concepts. See what’s hot at the CKIE store by Yanko Design! (Direct Power was originally posted on Yanko Design)
News: entrepreneur Elon Musk has revealed designs for a supersonic Hyperloop transport system to link Los Angeles and San Francisco in just 30 minutes (+ slideshow).
Hyperloop passenger capsule version cutaway with passengers onboard
Elon Musk, billionaire and founder of Paypal, electric-car firm Tesla Motors and space technology company SpaceX, has revealed designs for Hyperloop – a supersonic Jetsons-style transportation system for California. Travelling at over 700 mph, passengers would sit in a 1.35-metre-wide tube and be blasted through the 382-mile tunnel linking Los Angeles and San Francisco in just 30 minutes.
After months of speculation, Musk envisions using magnets and fans to shoot capsules that float on a cushion of air through a long tube. “Hyperloop is a new mode of transport that seeks to change this paradigm by being both fast and inexpensive for people and goods,” said Musk in the design study.
Hyperloop passenger capsule version with doors open at the station
In the designs, passenger capsules that float on a cushion of air are transported at high speed through a low pressure tube, elevated over the land between the two cities. “The capsules are accelerated via a magnetic linear accelerator affixed at various stations on the low pressure tube with rotors contained in each capsule,” Musk said.
Passengers would not notice the speed and travel by Hyperloop would feel a lot like being in an aeroplane, Musk explains: “It should really feel just super smooth and quiet. And there’d never be any turbulence or anything.”
Musk’s twin city vision. San Francisco to Los Angeles in 30 minutes by Hyperloop
Well-known for electric cars, civilian space travel and a vision for interplanetary evolution and sending humans to Mars, the transportation tycoon says Hyperloop would be twice as fast as an aeroplane, cheaper than a bullet train and completely self-powered. It would be both weather and earthquake resistant.
Hyperloop capsule in tube cutaway with attached solar arrays
“If we are to make a massive investment in a new transportation system, then the return should by rights be equally massive,” Musk said. “Compared to the alternatives, it should ideally be: safer, faster, lower-cost, more convenient, immune to weather, sustainably self-powering, resistant to earthquakes and not too disruptive to those along the route.”
The designs for Hyperloop are open source and Musk has asked for feedback from others to advance the design and make it a reality.
Schematic of air bearing skis that support the capsule
The transportation tycoon first mentioned Hyperloop in July 2012 – leaving amateur designers, engineers and investors speculating ever since. Musk described Hyperloop as the “fifth mode of transportation” – the previous four being train, plane, automobile, and boat. “It’s not a vacuum tunnel, but a cross between Concorde, a rail-gun and air hockey table,” he said.
“The Hyperloop is something that would go effectively faster than the speed of sound. Conceivably you could live in San Fran and work in LA,” said Musk.
Proposed Hyperloop route – San Francisco to LA in 30 minutes
Musk has said his Hyperloop designs rival the “high-speed” train the US are proposing. “The $60 billion bullet train they’re proposing in California would be the slowest bullet train in the world at the highest cost per mile.” Musk said. “They’re going for records in all the wrong ways. The cost of the SF-LA Hyperloop would be in the $6 billion range.”
Passenger capsules – 4.43 ft (1.35 m) wide and 6.11 ft (1.10 m) high
Watch a recording of Elon Musk talking about Hyperloop:
Musk’s ideas for futuristic transport don’t stop there. Speaking online during a Google “Hangout” event with Virgin Group CEO and founder of Virgin Galactic Richard Branson on Friday, Musk said he has another idea, to rival Concorde — a vertical lift-off supersonic electric passenger jet. He said that he envisaged journeys over 1000 miles long being done in aircraft that would travel faster than the speed of sound.
“If you fly high enough and have the right geometry of plane, you can make the sonic boom no louder than current planes,” he said.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk with Falcon 9 rocket. Photo: SpaceX
Musk commented that vertical take-off and landings would mean passengers could land closer to a desired destination – eliminating the need for large airports and long runways. Too busy – with electric car innovations, hovering reusable rockets and passenger flights to Mars – to launch into the vertical jet business just yet, Musk did add: “If somebody doesn’t do [it] then maybe, at some point in the future, I will.”
Here is the full announcement from SpaceX/Elon Musk:
Hyperloop August 12, 2013 By Elon Musk, Chairman, Product Architect, CEO
When the California “high speed” rail was approved, I was quite disappointed, as I know many others were too. How could it be that the home of Silicon Valley and JPL – doing incredible things like indexing all the world’s knowledge and putting rovers on Mars – would build a bullet train that is both one of the most expensive per mile and one of the slowest in the world? Note, I am hedging my statement slightly by saying “one of”. The head of the California high speed rail project called me to complain that it wasn’t the very slowest bullet train nor the very most expensive per mile.
The underlying motive for a statewide mass transit system is a good one. It would be great to have an alternative to flying or driving, but obviously only if it is actually better than flying or driving. The train in question would be both slower, more expensive to operate (if unsubsidised) and less safe by two orders of magnitude than flying, so why would anyone use it?
If we are to make a massive investment in a new transportation system, then the return should by rights be equally massive. Compared to the alternatives, it should ideally be:
Safer
Faster
Lower cost
More convenient
Immune to weather
Sustainably self-powering
Resistant to Earthquakes
Not disruptive to those along the route
Is there truly a new mode of transport – a fifth mode after planes, trains, cars and boats – that meets those criteria and is practical to implement? Many ideas for a system with most of those properties have been proposed and should be acknowledged, reaching as far back as Robert Goddard’s to proposals in recent decades by the Rand Corporation and ET3.
Unfortunately, none of these have panned out. As things stand today, there is not even a short distance demonstration system operating in test pilot mode anywhere in the world, let alone something that is robust enough for public transit. They all possess, it would seem, one or more fatal flaws that prevent them from coming to fruition.
Constraining the Problem
The Hyperloop (or something similar) is, in my opinion, the right solution for the specific case of high traffic city pairs that are less than about 1500 km or 900 miles apart. Around that inflection point, I suspect that supersonic air travel ends up being faster and cheaper. With a high enough altitude and the right geometry, the sonic boom noise on the ground would be no louder than current airliners, so that isn’t a showstopper. Also, a quiet supersonic plane immediately solves every long distance city pair without the need for a vast new worldwide infrastructure.
However, for a sub several hundred mile journey, having a supersonic plane is rather pointless, as you would spend almost all your time slowly ascending and descending and very little time at cruise speed. In order to go fast, you need to be at high altitude where the air density drops exponentially, as air at sea level becomes as thick as molasses (not literally, but you get the picture) as you approach sonic velocity.
Unless you’re a professional photographer, even the simplest of digital cameras can be perplexing with all those complex features! The Autodidactic Camera focuses on our tactile senses, using textured adjustment rings to make simple changes like brightness, framing, blur, and contrast. See your adjustments in real time on the simple angled interface/viewfinder before uploading to Facebook, emailing, or uploading to an online album directly from the device!
Researchers in Canada have designed a family of prosthetic musical instruments, including an external spine and a touch-sensitive rib cage, that create music in response to body gestures (+ interview + slideshow).
The instruments developed are a bending spine extension, a curved rib cage that fits around the waist and a visor headset with touch and motion sensors.
Each instrument can be played in a traditional hand-held way, but can also be attached to the body, freeing a dancer to twist, spin and move to create sound. All three are lit from within using LEDs.
“The goal of the project was to develop instruments that are visually striking, utilise advanced sensing technologies, and are rugged enough for extensive use in performance,” explained Malloch and Hattwick.
The researchers said that they wanted to create objects that are beautiful, functional and believable as instruments. “We wanted to move away from something that looked made by a person, because then it becomes less believable as a mysterious extension to the body,” Hattwick told Dezeen.
“The interesting thing would be either that it looks organic or that it was made by some sort of imaginary futuristic machine. Or somewhere in between,” he added.
Visor – worn on the head
The Rib and Visor are constructed from layers of laser-cut transparent acrylic and polycarbonate. “One of the layers uses a transparent conductive plastic film, patterned with the laser cutter to form touch-sensitive pads,” said Hattwick.
The pads are connected to electronics via a thin wire that runs through the acrylic. Touch and motion sensors pick up body movements and radio transmitters are used to transmit the data to a computer that translates it into sound.
Rib – fitted around the waist
The Spine is made from laser-cut transparent acrylic vertebrae, threaded onto a transparent PVC hose in a truss-like structure. A thin and flexible length of PETG plastic slides through the vertebrae, allowing the entire structure to bend and twist. The rod is fixed at both ends of the instrument using custom-made 3D-printed components.
“We used 3D printing for a variety of purposes,” Hattwick told Dezeen. “One of the primary uses was for solving mechanical problems. All of the instruments use a custom-designed 3D-printed mounting system, allowing the dancers to smoothly slot the instruments into their costumes.”
Speaking about the future of wearable technology, Hattwick told Dezeen: “Technological devices should be made to accommodate the human body, not the other way around.”
“Just as we’ve seen an explosion of DIY musical instruments and interactive art based on open-source electronics, perhaps we will see an explosion of DIY mechanical devices which create new ideas of how we use our body to interact with technology.”
Here’s a 15 minute documentary about the Instrumented Bodies project that features the instruments in action:
The team are now working to develop entirely 3D printed instruments and to radically re-imagine the forms that instruments can take.
Photographs are by Vanessa Yaremchuck, courtesy of IDMIL.
Here’s the full interview with PhD researchers Joseph Malloch and Ian Hattwick:
Kate Andrews: Why did you embark on this project? What was the motivation?
Ian Hattwick: This project began as a collaboration between members of our group in the IDMIL (specifically Joseph Malloch, Ian Hattwick, and Marlon Schumacher, supervised by Marcelo Wanderley), a composer (Sean Ferguson, also at McGill), and a choreographer (Isabelle Van Grimde).
In 2008 we worked with the same collaborators on a short piece for ‘cello and dancer’ which made use of a digital musical instrument we had already developed called the T-Stick. We decided to apply for a grant to support a longer collaboration for which we would develop instruments specifically for dancers but based loosely on the T-Stick.
Instrumented Bodies – digital prosthetics sketches
During the planning stages we decided to explore ideas of instrument as prosthesis, and to design instruments that could be played both as objects and as part of the body. We started by sketching and building rough prototypes out of foam and corrugated plastic, and attaching them to the dancers to see what sort of movement would be possible – and natural – while wearing the prostheses.
After settling on three basic types of object (Spine, Rib, and Visor) we started working on developing the sensing, exploring different materials and refining the design.
Kate Andrews: What materials are the spine, rib and visor made from?
Ian Hattwick: Each of the Ribs and the Visors is constructed from a solvent-welded sandwich of laser-cut transparent acrylic and polycarbonate. One of the layers uses a transparent conductive plastic film, patterned with the laser cutter to form touch-sensitive pads.
The pads are connected to the electronics in the base of the object using very thin wire, run through laser-etched grooves in the acrylic. The electronics in the base include a 3-axis accelerometer, a ZigBee radio transceiver, circuitry for capacitive touch sensing, and drivers for the embedded LEDs. Li-Ion batteries are used for power.
Each of the Spines is constructed from laser-cut transparent acrylic vertebrae threaded onto transparent PVC hose in a truss-like structure. One of the rails in the truss is a thin, very flexible length of PETg plastic that can slide through the holes in the vertebrae, allowing the entire structure to bend and twist. The PETg rod is fixed at both ends of the instrument using custom 3D-printed attachments.
For sensing, the Spines use inertial measurement units (IMUs) located at each end of the instrument – each a circuit-board including a 3-axis accelerometer, a 3-axis rate gyroscope, a 3-axis magnetometer, and a micro-controller running custom firmware to fuse the sensor data into a stable estimate of orientation using a complementary filter.
In this way we know the orientation of each end of the instrument (represented as quaternions), and we can interpolate between them to track or visualise the shape of the entire instrument (a video explaining the sensing can be watch on Youtube). Like the Ribs and Visors, the Spine uses a ZigBee radio transceiver for data communications and LiPoly batteries for power.
All of the instruments use a custom-designed 3D-printed mounting system allowing the dancers to smoothly slot the instruments into their costumes.
A computer equipped with another ZigBee radio transceiver communicates with all of the active instruments and collects their sensor data. This data is processed further and then made available on the network for use in controlling media synthesis. We use an open-source, cross platform software library called libmapper (a long term project of the IDMIL’s – more info at www.libmapper.org) to make all of the sensor data discoverable by other applications and to support the task of “mapping” the sensor, instrument and gesture data to the parameters of media synthesisers.
The use of digital fabrication technologies allowed us to quickly iterate through variations of the prototypes. To start out, we used laser-cutters at the McGill University School of Architecture and a 3D printer located at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT). As we moved to production we outsourced some of the laser-cutting to a commercial company.
Kate Andrews: How did collaboration across disciplines of design, music and technology change and shape the project?
Ian Hattwick: From the very beginning of the project, the three artistic teams worked together to shape the final creations. In the first workshop, we brought non-functional prototypes of the instruments, and the dancers worked with them to find compelling gestures, while we tried a variety of shapes and forms and the composers thought about the kind of music the interaction of dancers and instruments suggested.
Later in the project, as we tried a variety of materials in the construction of the instruments, each new iteration would suggest new movements to the dancers and choreographer. Particularly, as we moved to clear acrylic for the basic material of the ribs, the instruments grew larger in order to have a greater visual impact, which suggested to the dancers the possibility of working with gestures both within and without the curve of the ribs.
These new gestures in turn required the ribs to have a specific size and curvature. Over time, the dancers gained a knowledge of the forms of the instruments which gave them the confidence to perform as if the instruments were actual extensions of their bodies.
Component tests
Kate Andrews: How was 3D printing used during the project – and why?
Ian Hattwick: We used 3D printing for a variety of purposes in this project. One of the primary uses was for solving mechanical problems – such as designing the mounting system for the instruments.
We tried to find prefabricated solutions for attaching the instruments to the costumes, but were unable to find anything that suited our purposes, so we designed and prototyped a series of clips and mounts to find the shapes that would be easy for the dancers to use, that would be durable, and that would fit our space constraints.
In addition, 3D printing quickly became a tool which we use any time we had a need for a custom-shaped mechanical part. Some examples are a threaded, removable collar for mounting the PET-G rod to the spine, mounting collars and caps for the lighting in the spine.
[A document detailing the use of 3D printing in the project can be downloaded here].Instrumented Bodies – digital prosthetics sketches
Kate Andrews: Where do you see this technology being used now?
Ian Hattwick: 3D printing, or additive manufacturing as it is known in industry, is increasingly commonplace. In the research community, we’ve seen applications everywhere from micro-fluidic devices to creating variable acoustic spaces. One of my favourite applications is the creation of new homes for hermit crabs.
Kate Andrews: Can we expect to see other live performances using the instruments?
Ian Hattwick: We are currently working with the instruments ourselves to create new mappings and synthesis techniques, and in October we will bringing them to Greece to take part in a 10 day experimental artist residency in Greece focusing on improvisation. We’ve also been talking with a variety of other collaborators in both dance and music, so we expect to have quite a few different performances in the next year.
Kate Andrews: What do you think is the future for interactive and wearable technology?
Ian Hattwick: I’m really excited about the coming generations of constantly worn health monitors, which is the first widespread adoption of the ideas of the “quantified self” movement. I expect in a relatively short time it will be normal for people to maintain logs of more than just their their activity, heart rate, or sleep patterns, but also the effect of their mood and environment on their body. I’m also excited about e-textiles, clothing which can change its shape or visual appearance.
One of the ways in which I see the prosthetic instruments making a real contribution is the idea that technological devices should be made to accommodate the human body, and not the other way around. Particularly, you see musical instruments created so as to be easy to mass-manufacture, rather than seeking to identify and support natural physical expressions during musical performance. At the same time, by creating technologies which are invisible to the performer we take away the physical interaction with an instrument which is so much a part of how we think about performance, both individually and in ensembles.
Kate Andrews: Does this present a new future for music? For dance?
Joseph Malloch: There is no one future for music or dance, but we can always count on new technologies being adapted for art, no matter their intended purpose.
Ian Hattwick: In interactive dance, the paradigm has always been capturing the unencumbered motion of the dancer; in music, there tends to be a fetishisation of the instrument. So in a sense, the idea of prosthetic instruments challenges the existing norms of those art forms. Certainly, using the prosthetic instruments requires a different conceptualisation of how we can perform dance and music at the same time.
The challenges of working with prosthetic instruments can be strongly appealing, however, and the level of mechanical sophistication which is provided by new generations of digital manufacturing will create opportunities for artistic exploration.
Just as we’ve seen an explosion of DIY musical instruments and interactive art based on open-source electronics, perhaps we will see an explosion of DIY mechanical devices which create new ideas of how we use our body to interact with technology.
Kate Andrews: What are you working on now?
Ian Hattwick: Documentation: We work in academia, and publication of in-depth documentation of our motivations, design choices, and insights gained throughout the process of development is an important part of the work. We are part of a much larger community of researchers exploring artistic uses for new technologies, and it is important that we share our experiences and results.
Mapping: The programmable connections between the gestures sensed by the instruments and the resulting sound/media really define the experiences of the performers and the audience. We are busy finding new voices and modes of performance for the prostheses.
Improvements to hardware and software: In particular, sensing technology advances very quickly, with price, quality, and miniaturisation constantly improving. There are already some new tools available now that we couldn’t use three months ago.
3D printing musical instruments: We are talking with a 3D printer manufacturer about developing acoustic instruments which are entirely 3D printed, and which take advantage of the ability to manipulate object’s internal structure as well as radically re-imagining the forms which musical instruments can take.
Can noise ever be sweet? Yes, only if it’s routed through the Music Yue – noise converter device. The idea behind this project is to transform everyday noise pollution to something more soothing. Imagine living near the railway tracks or on a busy street and having to live with those track noises and blaring horns! The Music Yue simply detects a recurring rhythm and transforms it into a pleasing tune. Imginative and something we urbanites could do with!
– Yanko Design Timeless Designs – Explore wonderful concepts from around the world! Shop CKIE – We are more than just concepts. See what’s hot at the CKIE store by Yanko Design! (Sweet Noise was originally posted on Yanko Design)
In our second movie focussing on the cutting-edge world of 3D printing, Freedom of Creation co-founder Janne Kyttanen claims it was his passion for the technology rather than his business acumen that enabled him to make a commercial success out of designing and selling 3D-printed products.
When we visited Kyttanen as part of our research for Print Shift, the one-off magazine about 3D printing that we launched earlier this year, he showed us a range of different 3D-printed products he has designed over the years, including the very first lampshade he printed in 2000.
Gyro, Kyttanen’s first 3D-printed lamp
“This was the first thing I ever made and it cost me €5,000 at the time,” Kyttanen reveals in the movie. “It made no commercial sense whatsoever.”
However, over the subsequent years Kyttanen would team up with Belgian 3D printing company Materialise to create a range of 3D-printed lamps, one of the first collections in which 3D printing was used to created finished products rather than prototypes.
Lotus.MGX lamp by Janne Kyttanen for Materialise.MGX
“That whole experiment led to an entire collection of lights,” says Kyttanen. “We started a company together called Materialise.MGX and commercially that’s been very successful.”
Over the years, some of Kyttanen’s 3D-printed products have been profitable, such as his range of customisable iPhone cases for accessories company Freshfiber, and others have not. Kyttanen says that the products he put his passion into have tended to be more successful than those he designed to make a profit.
1597 wall lamp by Janne Kyttanen for Freedom of Creation
“I made a light, which is called the 1597”, he says. “It took me about 6 months to make it and I put an enormous amount of passion into it, but the final pieces were very expensive. We sold quite a lot of them and I was very happy with it. But I thought I could make it smaller, more consumer-friendly and try to maximise the profit. And then we hardly sold any.”
1597 wall lamp by Janne Kyttanen for Freedom of Creation
“One I wanted to make money out of and the other was the one I put my passion into, which was ten times more expensive, but that one sold well and the other one didn’t.”
610 pendant lamp by Janne Kyttanen, which didn’t sell as well as expected
Likewise, Kyttanen says that the success of his company Freedom of Creation, which was bought by American 3D-printing giant 3D systems in 2011, is down to his passion rather than his shrewdness as a businessman.
Twister.MGX by Janne Kyttanen for Materialise.MGX
“I started a company with a completely pointless, bogus business plan,” he says. “I went to a lot of banks and I tried to get finance for it and I told them: ‘One day the world will be in a way that I can put my entire company’s worth in this USB stick.’ That was probably 10 years ago.”
Twister.MGX by Janne Kyttanen for Materialise.MGX
“Everybody said: ‘No, that’s not going to happen, we’re not going to give you any finance because your business plan is completely bogus.’ Well, ten years later, I sell my company with exactly that same idea.”
Lily.MGX lamp by Janne Kyttanen for Materialise.MGX
Kyttanen concludes: “So, if I am able to inspire any young artists out there, don’t listen to anybody. Just follow your passion and it will find its own way.”
Lotus.MGX lamp by Janne Kyttanen for Materialise.MGX
Fashion and music have always had a close ties when it comes to mutual influence (and often consumer), so it comes as no surprise that many of the smaller independent labels—which sign musical acts outside of what would be considered the typical consumer tastes—also operate merchandise stores that err on the design-y side.
Taking a leap from the sweaty house show merch tables in college, many of these online stores are pushing beyond promotional and branding and into the realm of artistic collaborations aided by the same technology that so influences the production of its musical artists. Most obvious Music meets Design collaboration is the label Ghostly International promoting designers such as Matthew Shlian and collaborating with to experiment in digital music delivery.
More recently, indie label Electric Deluxe out of the Rotterdam, commissioned designers behind Studio Hands in Arnhem to create merchandise as experimental as the music.
Thanks to some creative coding by Martijn Mellema, Studio Hands created an installation that would transmit sound between two computers in order to generate a unique T-shirt design. Mellema’s application takes the respective designs (including the wire framed face of Speedy J), sonifies theml and plays the result through a speaker. The series of beats act as a Morse code that is reconstituted after being picked up by a secondary microphone and translated back into a 3D model. The resulting image appears with unpredictable glitches occurring in the unconventional transfer method.
Les graphismes et rendu des images dans les jeux-vidéo ne cesse de s’améliorer avec les années et nous offrent des univers de toute beauté. C’est ce qu’a souligné récemment Amy&Pink en publiant des images tirées du jeu « Fallout 3″ et qui montrent les progrès et la poésie qui peuvent se dégager de cette culture digitale.
1. Gary Card’s Abandoned Amusement Park Renowned set designer Gary Card has created larger-than-life, fantastical works for everyone from Lady Gaga and the New York Times’ T Magazine, to the London concept store LN-CC. In his first solo exhibition, “Abandoned Amusement Park Attraction,”…
Maybe I’m just bitter that my hopes for immediate 3D-sculpting artistic genius were dashed (see above), but there is something really strange about sculpting through a computer, even more so than just about any other method of 3D modeling. In an attempt not to delve too far into the pencil-vs-mouse debate (although really how can we avoid it?), the new 3D-sculpting web apps SculptGL and counterpart Sculptfab (essentially updated with a nicer UI) have the faint scent of nostalgia for a generations of hand crafters given the ol’ middle finger by technology.
The SculptGL app was developed by French student Stephane Ginier, drawing inspiration from the research on self-adaptive topologies done by Lician Stanculescu. With no word on the availability of Stanculescu’s 3D sculpting app ‘Freestyle’ for general consumption, we’ve been playing around with Grinier’s version. The application—while super fun—is perhaps more interesting in concept than in actual use.
User Interface of SculptGL (top) and Sculptfab (bottom)
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
User Interface of SculptGL (top) and Sculptfab (bottom)
