Once again a proof, that the best ideas in design are simple. Swiss designer Florian Kräutli made usage of a structure, that combines magnets and cloth to a curtain, that can take any shape. Just put the curtain into the right shape and you're done. The magnets will fix the curtain in shape, well you now why.
Not let the magnetic points be tiny little swarm robots. Yay, that'll be fun. "Beware of the crouching curtain!"
The structure itself remembers me on "superstructures" from city-visions from the 1960ies, just think of Archigram or something like this. Some related structure is the D12-Mediator. Are this geometric shape very somehow soothing and relaxing, or is it just my emotion?
Look at this fascinating technique some clever Japanese engineers developed to deconstruct a skyscraper high building. They just carry away the house from the bottom to the top! First the walls are removed, that are not statically loaded. The columns, that hold the weight of the building then are sloooowwly put down into the ground, this is the critical part I guess, until the next floor is ready to "go".
The poor building looks very unhappy. It seems like the thing is going on and on and on, like a good game of Tetris. Now I don't want to hear anyone saying, that industrial-built houses are not a party of its own. Even they can mature in dignity. If this would be a toy, there would be no problem in re-using the building-parts that are now "free" again, but I suppose architecture always needs fresh material for constructing new houses.
Another interesting music and robots and outdoor experience was made during an art project, called UT-21. This project connects several artists, 7 from Poland and 7 from Norway. The "Wind-up Bird" are small machines, that generate sounds very similar to woodpeckers, with some circuitry, mechanics and a wooden block. It should only have taken about 15 minutes for a real woodpecker to come to that place and "play along" with the music bots. (I don't know if this was a play for the bird, since I am no expert in biology. But I am really sure, that was pretty much a play experience for the art-people.)
One of the artist has some of the initial questions at the beginning of the project at hand. They are really pragmatic - for an art project. (But quite normal for a real researcher, eh?) They go like this:
How will nature treat them, with hostillity or acceptance? How will the wind-up birds adapt to heat/cold wet/dry conditions? Will small insects creep inside the circuitry creating possible short circuits, beetles eat the wood, squirrels use the wood slit as nut storage (or the roof as a slide?), birds use it as a shelter, etc.? Will they be treated as foreign objects or accepted into the local eco-system? How do real woodpeckers react? Are they threatened, attracted, or not bothered? Will they use the roof as a pecking drum?
Kiva Systems is building robots for warehouses, that have one the mission to fulfill. Support people at the last mile between virtual ordering of goods, for example via the internet, and the deliveryman.
The robots are connected by a wireless network and receive ordering information. Then they collect all necessary wares to bring them to the desired station. In other words: they are smart. Busy bees and friendly co-workers.
The people at Kiva let them perform a dance. How do you call this? Ballet? Well, I would love to see this creatures perform like this, when they got nothing on their mind. Not long ago you called this standby. Also read this article on Eggshell to get the basic idea of what I mean.
In Hanoi, Taiwan the streets are crowded and very far away from the regularity of our streets. It looks like complete chaos at first sight. But... it's interesting to watch how all this different entities move around individually, although they have different pace, destinations and vehicles. All this chaos shows an inner logic. A fantastic example of human-based swarm behavior with heterogeneous elements.
According to Engadget, Houson is beeing invaded by so called "crazy raspberry ants", that came to Houson on a cargo boat. The tricky thing on this ant are, that they are somehow attracted by electronic devices and therefore are responsible for ringing firealams, malfunction computers, disabling sewage pumps and at least even destroyed one gas meter. The species seem to be resistible against the usual way to exterminate ant colonies.
Gish is an independent game, that is currently under development. You control something like an blob in the game, can merge with other blogs and steer things though. It just reminded me on two thing. First one: is you look, you will find that this is really swarm-robotic style. Second: Physics based games, toys and applications are really popping out at the moment.
This weblog is dedicated to fresh and alternate views on robotics. We will focus especially in music robots, toy robots, play and game and robots as well as the culture of robots. We are the the first robot-blog from Germany - and maybe from Europe - that write regularly on this topic! This blog is made by the same people around the Digital Tools Magazine. We will have some nice surprises later this year, so stay tuned!
