1. 3D-Printed Aston Martin Though the story called for a precious 1960 Aston Martin DB5 to be decimated, producers of “Skyfall,” the latest Bond installment, saved the rare icon by combining 3D printing with creative modeling. Propshop Modelmakers Ltd. employed a Voxeljet VX4000 large-scale printer to produce a series…
Lors du salon de l’automobile, l’Atelier GH a réalisé avec l’agence Auditoire la production de cet objet « Flying Sticks » pour le stand de Valeo. Près de 60 Flying Sticks forment ici une chorégraphie réussie et veulent transposer la métaphore technique des phénomènes naturels afin de rappeler la démarche environnementale.
Découvert en version coupé il y a plusieurs mois, voici une nouvelle version de la « Lamborghini Aventador » en découvrable Roadster et bleu métallisé. Un supercar doté d’un toit en fibre de carbone amovible, à double bosses. Une vitesse de pointe toujours identique à 350 km/h. Disponible dans le courant de l’année 2013.
Although tablets are the way to go, many folks still rely on their laptops for their meetings. Designer Frank Guo innocently muses at the thought of using a laptop mouse, which can be cumbersome. As a solution he’s drawn up on the Clip Mouse, which requires no carrying. Its unique ‘C’ shape and flexible material provide an easy way to affix the mouse to a laptop. Simply slide it on from the side and it attaches to the laptop securely.
Alors que les technologies d’impression et de reproduction d’objets et personnages en 3D existe depuis plusieurs années, Spoon & Tamago ont conçu cette superbe machine appelée Omote. Cette installation similaire au photomaton nouvelle génération propose de reproduire une figurine à l’effigie de la personne.
The iPhone is good for a lot of things, but movies… not so much! The Big Screen concept enhances the video capabilities of the iPhone by using a thin Fresnel lens at the front to magnify whatever is playing on the screen. The angle of the device instantly positions the phone and screen at a comfortable viewing angle. Even though touch screen functionality is disabled, side openings provide access to the volume and home buttons.
FMCG International a réalisé récemment un superbe simulateur de Formule 1, proposant une mise en situation digne d’une vraie voiture grâce à l’utilisation de véritables pneus Pirelli, et d’une carcasse en fibre de carbone. Un simulateur au design très réussi, à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.
As you might have noticed, we’ve had quite a bit of Asian design coverage lately (with a few more stories to come): between the second annual Beijing Design Week, a trip to Shanghai for Interior Lifestyle China and last week’s design events in Tokyo, we’re hoping to bring you the best of design from the Eastern Hemisphere this fall.
Of course, I’ll be the first to admit that our coverage hasn’t been quite as quick as we’d like, largely due to the speed bump of the language barrier. At least two of your friendly Core77 Editors speak passable Mandarin, but when it comes to parsing large amounts of technical information, the process becomes significantly more labor-intensive than your average blogpost… which is precisely why I was interested to learn that Microsoft Research is on the case.
In a recent talk in Tianjin, China, Chief Research Officer Rick Rashid (no relation to Karim) presented their latest breakthrough in speech recognition technology, a significant improvement from the 20–25% error of current software. Working with a team from the University of Toronto, Microsoft Research has “reduced the word error rate for speech by over 30% compared to previous methods. This means that rather than having one word in 4 or 5 incorrect, now the error rate is one word in 7 or 8.”
In the late 1970s a group of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University made a significant breakthrough in speech recognition using a technique called hidden Markov modeling which allowed them to use training data from many speakers to build statistical speech models that were much more robust. As a result, over the last 30 years speech systems have gotten better and better. In the last 10 years the combination of better methods, faster computers and the ability to process dramatically more data has led to many practical uses.
Just over two years ago, researchers at Microsoft Research and the University of Toronto made another breakthrough. By using a technique called Deep Neural Networks, which is patterned after human brain behavior, researchers were able to train more discriminative and better speech recognizers than previous methods.
Once Rashid has gotten the audience up to speed, he starts discussing how current technology is implemented in extant translation services (5:03). “It happens in two steps,” he explains. “The first takes my words and finds the Chinese equivalents, and while non-trivial, this is the easy part. The second reorders the words to be appropriate for Chinese, an important step for correct translation between languages.”
Short though it may be, the talk is a slow build of relatively dry subject matter until Rashid gets to the topic at hand at 6:45: “Now the last step that I want to take is to be able to speak to you in Chinese.” But listening to him talk for those first seven-and-a-half minutes is exactly the point: the software has extrapolated Rashid’s voice from an hour-long speech sample, and it modulates the translated audio based on his English speech patterns.
Thus, I recommend watching (or at least listening) to the video from the beginning to get a sense for Rashid’s inflection and timbre… but if you’re in some kind of hurry, here’s the payoff:
Children are stubborn and they don’t understand that viewing the computer (or TV) screen from too near a distance can affect their eyesight. As a victim of wearing glasses right from the eight grade, I have learnt this the hard way too. So designers Zhichao Xue & Chen Yizi have a very clever solution at hand. Place the I-CARE sensor on top of any screen and it keeps a check on the distance from which a person is viewing the screen. When the distance is less than 50 cm, the screen blurs up, forcing the person to step back for a crystal clear display.
I-CARE uses the human instinct rather than the preaching of the parents, and it can make the children take the initiative to adjust to the appropriate distance, so as to protect their eyes.
That hourglass-shaped device is the PowerPac, an energy storage device meant to be powered by a human on a stationary bicycle. Conceived of by South African design firm Ideso, the PowerPac won a Red Dot Design Award in the “Best of the Best” category.
“Our aim was to create an aesthetically pleasing, user-friendly and functional design that marries the fluidity of cycling with dynamic power generation,” says Ideso MD, Marc Ruwiel. “It can be used by avid cyclists who can reduce CO2 emissions and generate their own electrical power, while enjoying a good workout at home.”
I’m all for people-powered electricity generators, and I would’ve loved to have one of these during the recent blackout, but something struck me in the copy: “…An average cyclist could fully charge the battery from empty with 80 minutes of cycling and 132Wh of charge/potential energy can be stored in the battery.” The “Wh” designation stands for watt-hour, and “132Wh” means you could power a 132-watt device for 1 hour. For 80 minutes of cycling to yield, say, just over two hours of light from a 60-watt bulb sounds like a low yield, doesn’t it? My first thought was, can that be right?
I did a little digging, and here’s what I found. It turns out hooking a bicycle up to something that directly powers a mechanical device is a fairly efficient way to generate energy. Rig a bicycle up to drive a sewing machine or a hand mixer and you get decent bang for your buck. But the second you get batteries and electricity involved, the efficiency drops way, way off. An article in Low-tech Magazine called “Bike powered electricity generators are not sustainable” explains why:
…Generating electricity is far from the most efficient way to apply pedal power, due to the internal energy losses in the battery, the battery management system, other electronic parts, and the motor/generator. These energy losses add up quickly: 10 to 35 percent in the battery, 10 to 20 percent in the motor/generator and 5 to 15 percent in the converter (which converts direct current to alternate current). The energy loss in the voltage regulator (or DC to DC converter, which prevents you from blowing up the battery) is about 25 percent. This means that the total energy loss in a pedal powered generator will be 42 to 67.5 percent….
And it even turns out that the bicycle itself has mechanical inefficiencies that suck up more energy:
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