No Technical Know-How Needed: Endless Forms Web Site Helps Users ‘Breed’ 3-D Printable Objects

Forget draft tables and complicated computer-aided design programs: You dream it. Endless Forms helps you design it.

---

Cornell University engineers are allowing anyone to point, click, collaborate and create online in the evolution of printable, three-dimensional objects. They aim to transform the design of art, architecture and artificial intelligence.

Their new, interactive website EndlessForms.com, allows users to design their own things — from lamps and butterflies to furniture and faces — without any technical knowledge and using the same principles that guide evolutionary biology.

The Web site was developed by Jeff Clune, Cornell postdoctoral fellow; Jason Yosinski, Cornell graduate student in engineering; and Eugene Doan, Cornell undergraduate student in the Creative Machines lab of Hod Lipson, Cornell associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and computing and information science.

EndlessForms users can develop objects just as gardeners raise roses — a “generation” of objects is displayed, and a user chooses objects they like, which are “bred” to produce the next generation. Over time, objects evolve and users can publish these objects. Others can further evolve, share and rate them, creating a collaborative exploration of designs that, according to Lipson, represents an entirely new way of thinking about design. Users can then have their objects made by 3-D printing companies in a wide range of materials, such as silver, steel, ceramic or sandstone.

The concept eliminates the need for skilled engineers to draw in Computer-Aided Design (CAD) programs, which can be complicated and non-intuitive. These new design tools free people to focus creativity, instead of being mired in technical details, Lipson said.

Now that 3-D printing is taking off, the goal is to unshackle the design process, flooding the industry with objects that are truly one of a kind. Lipson likens the 3-D printing industry to iPods with no music — the printers exist, but the availability of content is bottlenecked by the old methods like CAD that few people know how to use and that stifle creativity.

read more : Here

Go to EndlessForms.com to try it out yourself!!

Related articles

• How 3D Printing Will Change Absolutely Everything It Touches (forbes.com)

Tell the Time Using Only Your Breath

Wouldn’t it be great to feel powerful, at least as far as your gadgets are concerned? The Eole watch is a timepiece designed by Julien Moise that works under the user’s own breath power. The delicate rotating bit moves with nothing more than a gentle puff of air from the wearer’s lungs.

While the watch’s parts are sitting still the display is blank. But when the wearer exhales, the tiny rotor turns and enough electricity is generated to turn on the delicate-looking display for a moment, giving you just enough time to see whether you’re late for that appointment.

 

 

read more: Here

Related articles

• Sniffer dogs can be used to detect lung cancer (eurekalert.org)

Brilliantly Brainy: Do Art Cars Dream of Electric Beeps?

 

Most drivers have a very strong connection to their vehicles. It’s almost as though our cars are an extension of our own bodies; we ride around in our metal and plastic cocoons, seeing the world through the attached windows and mirrors. But what if our cars themselves had memories and dreams?

 

The Brain Car is a moving sculpture from artist Olaf Mooij. On the back of an old hearse sits a huge brain-like sculpture that looks awesome enough by day. But by night, it lights up with another type of awesome entirely.

All day as it is traveling, the Brain Car records images of where it goes and the sights it encounters. Then after dark, the Brain Car remixes those “memories” and an interior projector replays on the inside surface of the brain.

 

Read more here: gajitz

Related articles

• IBM Makes Brainy Breakthrough in Computing (tjantunen.com)

Stelarc: Pushing the body’s boundaries

(Image: Newspix/Rex Features)

(Image: Newspix/Rex Features)

The Australian performance artist with an ear on his arm discusses his work challenging what it is to be human

As an artist, what is your role in shaping technology?
It’s a very modest one. Each new technology generates novel information and unexpected images of the body and the world, which often destabilises our paradigms of what a body is and how it operates. Technology generates uncertainty, it constructs the unexpected. That’s what makes it exciting to incorporate as part of artistic expression.

What is it about the boundaries of the body that fascinates you?
All of my projects explore alternate anatomical architectures – a body with a third hand, or an extra ear, or an artwork inside a bodily space instead of a public space.

We are biological bodies, but we are often accelerated, augmented and enhanced by technology. There may be a time soon when bodies become portals of sensory experience. I might be able to see with your eyes when you are in New York, for example, or listen with someone’s ears from London. We can no longer think of the body as simplistically bound by its skin and containing a single self.

Will it become harder to tell where we end and technology begins?
That’s beginning to be the case. In 1000 years’ time, perhaps technology will be invisible because it will be inside our bodies. We will be able to recolonise the human body with micromachines, nanosensors and nanobots that augment our bacterial and viral population.

Will the body become obsolete?
I think that the body is obsolete. From the standpoint that it’s increasingly inadequate to cope with the technological terrain it inhabits. That doesn’t mean we can do without a body; there has to be some kind of embodiment. But I think the possibilities are there for unexpected hybrids of biology, technology and computer code. We are very much a meat, metal and software system now.

Do you worry that your work combining technology and the body might jeopardise your health?
There’s been no deliberate attempt to endanger the body, but to do anything physically difficult or technically complicated, yes, those actions might be risky. You do things with a positive attitude and a sense that you need to do this if you are to achieve anything.

Is physical discomfort part of exploring the body’s boundaries?
Only in a very general sense. If you are going to suspend your body with 18 hooks in the skin, and you are going to be hoisted 60 metres high by a large crane, there may be all sorts of possible problems. You anticipate those and try to take appropriate precautions. Those performances were not done to have a painful experience.

Why do you have an ear on your left arm?
At the moment this is only a relief of an ear. It’s partly surgically constructed and partly cell grown. We need to surgically lift the helix to create an ear flap, and then we will grow a soft earlobe using my adult stem cells. When the ear is more of a three dimensional structure we will reinsert the microphone and connect it to a wireless transmitter. Then any Wi-Fi hotspot will internet-enable the ear.

We are replicating a bodily structure, relocating and then rewiring it for additional capabilities.

Read More over here: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2011/07/stelarc-pushing-the-bodys-boundaries.html

Related articles

• New Rules for Making Hybrid Animal-Humans (foxnews.com)

Electric Hyper Touch Guitar Replaces The Strings with Multi-Touch Screen

As sleek as it looks, the new Hyper Touch Guitar is amply customizable and flexible to musician needs as well. A multi-touch screen has replaced the strings and allows myriad possibilities of expression via perfect instrument customization. Without having to worry about changing the strings and sound effects, the electric hyper touch guitar acts as a wireless command center from which you can manage your music. Well, the design maintains its iconic shape of standard electric guitars with additional enhancements and improvisation. Some controls including tone, volume as well as tremolo are maintained for rapid and intuitive use. It offers ease in handling and adapts greatly to musician needs.

Designer : Massimo Battaglia

 

Not sure if the Hardcore musician is going to be happy with this development though! 🙂

See More over here:

Eye-Controlled Laptop and ‘Telepresence’ Robot Debut

The future is happening at CeBIT, the world’s top tech fair in Hanover, Germany.

 

THE GIST

• A laptop that allows users to open files, play music and view pictures using their eyes was on display.
• So was a humanoid robot that could transform business meetings and reduce the need for long-distance travel.

Billed as a global first, a laptop allowing users to open files, play music and view pictures using just the power of their eyes was turning heads Wednesday at the CeBIT, the world’s top tech fair.

The otherwise unremarkable laptop integrates cutting-edge “eye tracking” technology by Swedish firm Tobii that follows the movement of the user’s eyes and allows him or her to operate menus and select icons.

The prototype is also good for the environment as it recognizes when you are not looking at it and automatically goes into screen saver mode, saving energy, Tobii says. It restarts as soon as the user glances at the monitor again.

“It’s definitely going to be in the laptops of the future,” said Anders Olsson from Tobii. “You can do pretty much anything you would do with your normal laptop.

“We’ve been stuck for a quarter of a century with a keyboard and a mouse. It’s time to move to the next step and eye control technology is the perfect solution.”

The technology is already used in other areas, including in car safety where a sensor tracks eye movement to determine whether the driver is drowsy, and in helping paralyzed people operate everyday objects just with their eyes.

Read more over here: http://news.discovery.com/tech/eye-controlled-laptop-and-telepresence-robot-debut-110303.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1

Power of People: Human-Electric Hybrid Muscle Car

I’m in a bit of Flintstone Mood…so, to build upon this topic: Here is a rather stunning idea, It’s the: ‘Human-Electric Hybrid Muscle Car”!

 

http://www.humancar.com/

“The HumanCar is an arrangement of mechanical parts that convert oscillatory motion into rotational motion about one axis. Simultaneously, it converts oscillatory motion about another axis into oscillatory motion about an axis connected to a reference frame. The energy available from multiple human beings is converted by the mechanism into rotational power creating useful work, such as to propel a wheeled frame capable of supporting the mechanism and its occupants. A bi-directional power interface allows occupants to face forward or backward or in any combination. If each pair of occupants is placed back-to-back, and each adjacent pair is caused to create a controlled torque about a crankshaft, then power pulses may be balanced as much as possible about the crank shaft. The leaning motion from one or more occupants controls direction through a system of connecting members. Participants may all face forward or backward or in any combination. If each pair of occupants is placed back-to-back, and each adjacent pair is caused to create rotational power pulses which are balanced as much as possible about the crank shaft, then the most efficient use of the mechanism may be obtained.” Version one proves it’s possible. The giant benefit that results is a singular plyometric exercise that does not exist outside of this platform. The HumanCar is based upon original technology that has deep roots in automotive technology. The vehicle shown is of similar concept, with an aircraft quality steel tube ‘space-frame’ chassis, all hand built. This vehicle is very fast, and handles great. The HumanCar has proven to be the same.” 2005 v2.0 Proto Charles S. Greenwood PE, HumanCar Inventor http://www.humancar.com/ http://www.humancar.com/ See Video: For more information head over to: HumanCar.com