3:55 PM
Kakrona Chan
The World Maker Faire was an impossible density of coolness for anybody with even slightly geeky tendencies. Robots, rockets, art cars, electronics and even a giant Tesla coil all shared the grounds of the New York Hall of Science. Needless to say, we were a bit overwhelmed, but these 10 exhibits caught out attention (Did we mention the giant fire ball?).
The Cubinator currently holds the Guinness world record for fastest machine solve of a Rubik's cube. Pete Redmond, who developed the robot for the final project of his master's degree, says that its solve time averages about 25 seconds. Webcams in the robot's eyes detect the colors on the cube and the machine solves the puzzle by using an algorithm to find the fewest moves. It also has has a sense of humor, shouting "oh dear!" when it occasionally drops the cube.
It's always hard to ignore a fireball gun (though admittedly easier if it's hanging out next to a pulse jet-powered steam punk carousel). But when the folks at PopSci told us we could push the button ourselves, it was impossible to resist.
Brooklyn Aerodrome's "towel" kept people looking toward the sky. The homemade flyer is pretty much a souped-up paper airplane made out of trash. Inventors Breck Baldwin and Mark Harderhost free towel building sessions in their basement studio and sell kits to people who want to build their own flying towels.
Egg-Bot is a build-your-own robot that decorates eggs (simple enough). All of the electronics and software are designed to be hackable and repurposable so that you can easily build something new with it. To be fair, the $195 robot also decorates spherical objects like ping pong balls, tree ornaments, and golf balls. But that was probably too much to work into the title.
In this exhibit by Samwell Freeman, participants use a remote to control a vehicle that draws on a paper floor. The same remote simultaneously creates a drawing on the computer screen. "As more people interact with the piece, a population of drawings accumulates," explains Freeman's website. "This population exists in an artificial life environment where drawings evolve, mate and die." In other words, there are all sorts of way to play with them, like having the robots draw a physical version of the digital drawing.
Graffiti artist Tony Quan (known as TEMPT1) was diagnosed with ALS in 2003, a disease that paralyzed most of his body, but not his artistic creativity. Members of Free Art and Technology (FAT), OpenFrameworks, the Graffiti Research Lab, and The Ebeling Group communities teamed up to develop a device and software that allows Tony to draw by moving his eyes.
You make MakerBot. And then MakerBot makes you whatever you want. The 3D printer outputs plastic layers according to designs that you create or download. The "thing-o-matic" printer kit retails for $1,225.
We were a little weirded out when a man wearing this exhibition approached us for a hug. That's before we realized his t-shirt had a built-in hug decoder. The decoded hug is sent to a Twitter account. According to the t-shirt, I gave an "Awww i missed you, too" hug.
This kinetic sculpture, designed by Patricia Adler, strives to assemble itself into a three dimensional mobius strip (which looks like an infinity sign). An algorithm on a micro controller drives eight stepper motors to control each individual segment. There are many thousands of configuration possibilities, so it will take several months for the sculpture to complete itself.
When people watch the sculpture, their proximity speeds the algorithm, which gives the impression that they're "helping" the sculpture reach its final state.
Dan Perrone created Uokhad to "address the act of composition and exhibition of musical ideas." The floor of the exhibit is covered in audio cassette tape that's loaded with unusual sounds. Perrone made most of them with his guitar, but also used other props like crinkled up plastic. When the remote-control car (which is usually covered by a rock sculpture) moves, it drags a Walkman tape-head across the strips and plays the sounds.
[via mashable]
Posted in: Tech
0 comments:
Post a Comment