ImaginativePRO Blog

THE SOLAR BIKINI: A BIKINI MADE OF WAFER-THIN SOLAR PANELS THAT CAN POWER YOUR CELL PHONE OR ANY DEVICE WITH A USB PORT

 

The idea: A bikini made of wafer-thin solar panels sewn together that can power anything with an USB port. 

Whose idea: Andrew Schneider

Why it's brilliant: This safe in water iKini allows you charge your iPhone while suntanning and later take a swim without getting electroshocked (although you might want to unplug your phone).

What's next for the designer? the iDrink, men's swimming shorts that can cool beer.

COMMENTARY:  This is one hell of an idea.  It's GREEN.  It just might work.  Bikini-clad chicks charging their iPhones, BlackBerry and Android phones everywhere.  That works for me.  

Andrew says:

A solar film bikini that charges your iPod! (With a USB connection!)

The suit is a standard medium-sized bikini swimsuit retrofitted with 1" x 4" photovoltaic film strips sewn together in series with conductive thread. The cells terminate in a 5 volt regulator into a female USB connection 

Don't worry guys! The male version of the Solar Bikini (coming soon) called the iDrink, features a greater surface area which equals more output voltage. This additional juice is used to power a 1.5 amp peltier junction which cools a single beer in a custom coozy. Double cool! 

The iDrink solar swimware line is perfect for those who want to go the beach, listen to music, and enjoy a cold and deserved beverage, but who don't want to get wet! You've got tunes, you've got beer, you've got sun, and you've got eachother in swimwear. The rest is up to you. 

See you on the Jersey Shore!

Andrew is quite an inventor and his site includes a variety of out-of-mind inventions.  

The solar bikini has been written up in Make:, Wired, Gizmodo, Treehugger, and 1TrackMind

Courtesy of an article dated June 3, 2011 appearing in SAI Business Insider

ENGLISH SCHOOL BOY INVENTS THE 'SMART BELL', AN ANTI-BURGLAR DOORBELL THAT CALLS YOU BY CELLPHONE WHEN YOU ARE NOT HOME

A schoolboy is on course for a £250,000 windfall after inventing a doorbell that fools burglars into believing somebody is home at an empty property.

Smart Bell, designed by 13-year-old Laurence Rook, dials the homeowner's mobile phone when pressed, allowing them to talk to whoever is outside their front door.

The device even produces a small amount of white noise to give any unexpected guest the impression they are speaking to someone inside the house on an intercom system. 

The invention, which uses an inbuilt SIM card and existing mobile-phone technology, would also allow homeowners to give instructions to drivers making deliveries at their property.

Laurence has already sold 20,000 units to telecoms giant Commtel Innovate and is finalising a deal with an unnamed second company for a further 25,000 units.

When the deal is signed, he will be £250,000 richer.

The teenager, from Whyteleafe, Surrey, said:  

"At first I designed the idea because my mum was fed up going to the Post Office to collect deliveries made when we were not at home.  When I started to develop the Smart Bell, I realised it could also be a great burglar-deterrent.  Most opportunist burglars ring the doorbell first to see if anyone is at home, but Smart Bell has the perfect way to counteract this.  If you are out and a burglar comes up to your door and rings the doorbell, after ten seconds Smart Bell will ring through to your mobile phone and you will be able to answer. There is a small amount of white noise so it will sound like an intercom and the burglar will never know that you're not actually inside the house."

Laurence had the idea for the Smart Bell after his school challenged pupils to come up with an invention for a Dragons' Den-style competition.

Laurence, who won a scholarship to attend private Trinity School in Croydon, South London, was initially unable to enter the contest because he didn't have a working prototype.

But his parents, James and Margaret Rook, then showed his plans to family friend Paula Ward, who was crowned the world's top female inventor in 2004 for designing a web chatroom safety system.

Laurence said:

"Paula thought it was brilliant and sent off the designs to China for it to be made into the actual product.  I was gobsmacked that she thought it was so good."

Less than 12 months after the prototype was developed, Commtel Innovate, the UK's largest manufacturer and distributor of Telcomm's accessories,  is preparing for the wholesale release of the product and High Street giants B&Q, PC World, Currys and Comet are now set to stock the Smart Bell, which will cost £40.

Laurence is trying to decide what to do with his windfall.   He said,

 "When I found out I was going to make a quarter of a million pounds, I thought, Wow, that's a lot of computer games  It's amazing having that amount of money, but I haven't told any of my school friends yet. I don't know what they'll think.  I'm going to save most of the money – I want to go to university, so I'll need it for that."

Mrs Rook, 39, an administrator who has two other sons, Matthew, 11, and Oliver, eight, added:

"It's extra¬ordinary but I'm just trying to keep Laurence grounded at the moment."

Richard Drewnicki, chief executive of Commtel UK, said:

"There is certainly a market for this kind of product. We hope it will prove popular."

COMMENTARY:    Lawrence is one smart young lad with plans to use his monetary gains to go to college.   His folks really raised a good kid.   What a great story.  I hope the Smart Bell is a big hit.  I would love to see it distributed here in the U.S. and I know exactly who could sell it.

Courtesy of an article dated June 5, 2011 appearing in Before It's News 

 

 

GADGETS FOR THE PEEPER: MICHAEL KRITZER DESIGNS 'PEEPSTER' A DEVIOUS LOOKING LITTLE THREE-LEGGED SPY CAMERA

Coming soon to your bedroom window!

Peepster, the curious little concept device you see here, is possibly the world’s creepiest camera. Consider the evidence: It’s designed to snap photographs on the sly, with a built-in timer that ticks away for up to 8 minutes, depending on how you set it. (Eight minutes being the precise amount of time it takes a guy in a trenchcoat to go from stashing a camera on someone’s bedroom window sill to hiding behind a lamppost.) It’s shaped, inexplicably, like a squid. And, oh yes, it’s called the Peepster. The Peepster!

Miami-based Michael Kritzer designed the camera, when he worked at Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Kritzer led the design work; Alex Bogusky led the initiative. (Bogusky putting creepy $&# into the world? No way.)

Mind you, it was not originally intended to land on the wish lists of weirdo stalkers everywhere. VW had tapped CPB to develop family-friendly products to accompany the launch of its Routan minivan. Kritzer’s idea: a camera that “took a video diary of the family together, “ he tells Co.Design, “since to me, a trip in the car is the modern family’s dinner table.” In short, you’d pop the camera behind the rear view mirror, set the timer, and go about building a visual record of all those precious moments in a minivan. (Driving, kids hitting each other, driving, kids hitting each other, kids hitting each other...) Kinda’ sweet, huh?

“We took that concept and created the Peepster, a stealthy little spy camera with rubber coated, bendable, wired covered legs and a small form factored body,” Kritzer says. Why the anthropomorphic shape? “If something is watching you,” Kritzer says, “it might as well look like it's watching.” Um, we guess?

Sinister as it seems, the Peepster is actually a pretty clever way to zap natural-looking photographs -- to capture the candid shots, in which people resemble humans instead of waxy facsimiles of themselves. Think about it: With your average timer, you have just enough time to smile then stiffen before the camera flashes. But an 8-minute lag provides ample room to smile, stiffen, then relax. (The device actually has six settings, between 10 seconds and 8 minutes.) And it’s so slender and unobtrusive, even with the tentacle-like tripod fully extended, it can be a subtle presence among subjects -- it can hide in boxes and behind coffee mugs and, yes, even on a bedroom window sill.

In the end, VW dropped CPB, so Peepster never got past the boardroom. Kritzer tells us that CPB still owns the rights -- for the record, it goes by a different name in-house -- and last he checked, CPB was talking to companies about possible partnerships. In other words: It may or may not hit the shelves, but probably not anytime soon. We’ll just have to keep taking pictures the boring, old, non-pervy way.

COMMENTARY:   According to Michael Kritzer’s Simple Artifact website, Simple Artifact is an invention and craft shop specializing in creating quintessential and desirable artifacts for today and tomorrow. 

Based in Miami, FL. Simple Artifact offers services in Industrial and Graphic Design, with focuses on strategy, product design, company identity / branding, art direction, and print & digital media. The shop also has connections to a wide range of engineering solutions if and when it is needed. 

Simple Artifact is founded on the belief that great product excels when experientially relevant, provocative ideas are paired to an essential, modest form that resonates in a simple sketch or narrative. When the right balance is made, products advertise themselves and are joyful and inherently talk worthy. 

PEEPSTER SPECS:

The Peepster, a USB flash based camera with a timed shutter, started life as a CP+B product accessory for VW’s Routan and then became an all out spy cam under the Duh Technologies umbrella. With Peepster’s small form factor and squid like appendages, he could be anywhere – whether that’s behind a rearview mirror, a mug or in a box – waiting for the perfect shot. And like all things powerful, power can be corrupted — and with Peepster, it’s up to you to use it wisely (though it’s probably more fun not to).

Tech Eyeglasses:

• 4 GB Flash Hard Drive
• 3 MP Camera
• Time settings:
• 8 min, 4 min, 2 min, 1 min, 30 sec, 10 sec, on the spot shot

Courtesy of an article dated May 23, 2011 appearing in Fast Company

JONAS DAMON HAS DESIGNED A DOCK THAT TURNS YOUR IPHONE INTO AN ANALOG CLOCK OR PORTABLE RADIO/MUSIC PLAYER

What you’ve got above is a personal project by Frog creative director Jonas Damon and one of the best-looking alarm clocks we’ve seen in a long time -- okay, in a few weeks, anyway. With its smooth beech-wood body and rounded edges, it harks back to the faux-grain GE flip clocks of yore, only it's better, cleaner -- it’d do Dieter Rams proud. There’s just one hitch: It’s a fake.

Not fake in the sense that it doesn’t exist. It most certainly does. It’ll be sold through the ur-hip design shop Areaware in September. (Pre-order it here.) It’s fake in the sense that it doesn’t do what it appears it should do. That woody body, where the electronic hardware oughta’ go? Hardware-free. The speaker grid up top? Purely aesthetic.

What this impostor of an alarm clock does do is stash your iPhone. It’s an Alarm Dock. Thirty-five dollars gets you the wood shell and a flip clock app. Fire up the app, pop your iPhone in the dock, and wake up each morning like it’s 1972 all over again. The idea: “[T]his dock returns meaningful form to the sliver of a device that will wake you up,” Areaware writes on its website. Which is to say that it’s designed to appeal to our boundless nostalgia for a time when physical objects had heft and maybe even a little soul. We’ll also take “meaningful form” to suggest that the alarm clock is, as all alarm clocks should be at 6 a.m., eminently throwable (minus your sliver of an iPhone, of course).

Alarm Dock is one of three products Damon created to sprinkle some analog flavor on the iWorld. The other two, a radio dock for iPhone and a TV dock for iPad that looks almost exactly like the clunky old Zenith we grew up watching Sesame Street on, add functionality to the mix; they come with speakers that actually work. Both are prototypes, though -- apparently Damon tried to manufacture the iPad TV last year only to run into “quality problems,” he tells Co.Design -- so neither is available just yet. But when they are, we bet more than a few irony-obsessed hipsters and folks sentimental for anything that’s more than 5 minutes old will buy iPads just to revisit the boob-tube experience of their youth. We might be one of them.

COMMENTARY:   Cool designs, I am sure that some evangelical Apple iPhone or iPad owner will buy one. If you own an iPad, I have something much more exciting and rewarding HERE.

Courtesy of an article dated May 12, 2011 appearing in Fast Company Design

GOOGLE GOOGLES: A VISUAL SEARCH APP THAT USES YOUR SMARTPHONE CAMERA TO IDENTIFY THINGS, BUT HAS A WAYS TO GO

Santa Monica, California (CNN) -- Computers used to be blind, and now they can see.

Thanks to increasingly sophisticated algorithms, computers today can recognize and identify the Eiffel Tower, the Mona Lisa or a can of Budweiser.

Still, despite huge technological strides in the last decade or so, visual search has plenty more hurdles to clear.

At this point, it would be quicker to describe the types of things an image-search engine can interpret instead of what it can't. But rapid progress, coupled with the growing number of brilliant minds taking up the challenge, is making intelligent robo-eyesight within reach.

Hartmut Neven, an engineering director leading visual-search initiatives for Google, predicts that near-perfection could come in the next decade.  Says Neven,

"Within 10 years, we can pretty much recognize, in principle, pretty much any object we're interested in. Scientific and technical progress is accelerating in an exponential (pace)."

Neven began his research in 1992, and under his own forecasted timeline, is essentially more than halfway to meeting his goal.

Google Goggles

The product of his work and of a team of engineers is contained in a service called Goggles. You can watch Google's 'Googles' video HERE. It exists as a standalone application for Android phones and as a feature of the Google Mobile App for the iPhone.

With Goggles, the user snaps a picture, which is transmitted across cellular networks to Google's servers. Google's computers then tell the phone what they recognized in the photo. This process can take only a second or two -- and sometimes even less.

Google's algorithms, the lines of code that break down data into bits recognizable by machines, are good at picking out certain things.

Iconic buildings and artwork, products on store shelves, barcodes and magazine advertisements are a breeze. The system can recognize text on a poster and search the Web for a page with similar writing, or translate the menu at a French restaurant.

Microsoft also has a visual-search app for Bing, though its features are more limited.

So far, these computer systems are less skilled at recognizing humans. But the Google Goggles team is working on a system that can identify faces in photos, as long as those people say it's OK for Google to include them in its database, Neven said.

Unrecognizable objects

But Google's algorithms return no results for loads of common things. Furniture, clothing, accessories, gadgets, food, animals, cars, trees and many everyday objects are seen as foreign objects by the system.  Says Neven,

"Our ambition is nothing less than being able to recognize any object on the planet," Neven said. "But today, computer vision is not in that state yet. There are many things that, unfortunately, we cannot properly recognize."

The biggest obstacles are in one category: Objects without a strong "visual texture," and with few distinct markings. These include many products that are hard to identify without colorful packaging, such as purses, shoes and cell phones.  Says Neven,

"Unpackaged products is something that has been a priority for a while, but it's not easy to solve.  If we get that done much better, then suddenly 90% of relevant objects are in our reach."

Google developers are hammering away at the problem. Neven is excited about the potential to enable the system to identify which species of tree a leaf fell from, or the model of car parked on the street.

In the meantime, Google lists the Goggles app in its Labs section, meaning the project is still in an experimental phase, a Google spokesman said. Allowing access this way lowers expectations and avoids exposing the technology to too many people who may find themselves turned off by the fact that it often fails to return accurate results.

The app displays a quick tutorial when it's first launched. Google also showcases Goggles features that aren't all that practical but that create buzz for the technology, such as a version that can solve Sudoku puzzles.

The Goggles app can also read QR codes, those black-and-white squares found on ads and posters that, when scanned by smartphones, access videos and other interactive content. Until Goggles can recognize everything, QR codes serve an interim need: Take a picture of something and get its digital counterpart.

Other image-search uses

This underlying image-search technology is important to many Google products.

The image-recognition algorithms help to recognize cars and people in Google's Street View service in order to blur license plates and faces. They also help raise red flags when a photo reveals too much human skin, categorizing them for Google Images's "adult" filter.

Neven joined Google in 2006 when the search giant acquired his company, called Neven Vision. His former colleague, Orang Dialameh, is the CEO at IPPLEX, a holding company that also has teams of engineers working on image-recognition projects.

Dialameh's developers have employed cameras to build apps that can help identify objects, such as cash or cereal boxes, without requiring the user to snap a picture. Some of these apps are being marketed as utilities for blind people. IPPLEX's next venture, Nantworks, will allow users to tag objects using a cell phone's camera, Dialameh said.

Dialameh, who, like his colleague, is based in Southern California, faces many of the same obstacles that Google does -- not the least of which is convincing people to use the apps in their daily lives. Says Dialemah,

"How will this become a consumer behavior? We're not used to taking out a camera and showing stuff to our phone."

Others are embedding this kind of technology in more obvious applications.  Face.com can examine photos on Facebook to identify people in pictures who weren't manually tagged. In the same way, Neven's technology at Google can be used to identify faces in a Picasa user's personal photo collection.

But this facial-recognition technology, which sometimes thinks your sister is actually Grandpa, has a ways to go. And not everyone is sold on its usefulness.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview with several reporters after a news conference in November.

"Before people-tagging came out, I think most people would have said that the best way to figure out who's in photos was to have some face-recognition algorithm, but it actually turns out that the best way is to just have people tagged."

COMMENTARY:    Google Googles is definitely interesting visual search technology, but I think the idea of developing an all encompasing app that can visually identify so many different tings, namely, text, landmarks, faces, artwork and objects is going to be a challenge because it's just too broad.  This is another example of Google trying to do too much.  Tackling an impossible task.  I bet Goggle Googles could not visually identify a bowl full of flour from one full of baking soda. The result would say something like, "a bowl  of something..."  Sort of reminds me of "Data" the humanoid robot in Star Trek would saying, "Captain, there's a 90% probablity that it's a Klingon battlestar". They should stay focused on one thing, and be good at it.  Several limitations have been pointed out, and are going to be problematic, and may never be solved.  There are many of these cute visual identification apps out there.  I have experimented with a few myself.  All of them have the same problems.  If human beings can't visually identify everything in their environment, you can't expect an app and a web cam to be able to do this. 

Courtesy of an article dated April 14, 2011 appearing in CNN Tech

By TwitterButtons.com  

HOW KICKSTARTER HELPED TWO INVENTORS RAISE TONS OF CASH TO BUILD THEIR NEW TECH TOYS

Studio Neat, which had a breakout hit on Kickstarter with the Glif iPhone stand, is trying for another smash.

There are scads of styluses out there for the iPad, for the simple reason that writing or drawing with a pen feels a whole lot better than with your finger. But these all have one glaring problem: All those styluses are shaped like pens.

Which obviously doesn't sound like a problem, except when you consider that writing or drawing on an iPad doesn't feel like using a pen and paper--there's not much friction, so having a teeny stylus in hand feels a bit like sliding across a frozen pond in sneakers. Ergo, the stylus has to adapt.

The Cosmonaut: A minimal, wide-grip capacitive stylus for touch screens from Studio Neat on Vimeo.

 

Tom Gerhardt and Dan Provost of Studio Neat have solved the problem in a manner that's totally obvious in hindsight: The Cosmonaut, a stylus that feels more like a dry-erase marker. Dry erase markers, of course, have solved this low friction problem with a tip that has a bit of give, and a fat body that adjusts to the lack of grip you find in a "low fidelity" user situation.

To raise money, Gerhardt and Provost are turning to crowdfunding site Kickstarter--which is interesting, because they've already had a huge breakout hit on the site, with Glif, a tripod and mounting stand for iPhone 4. (Initially, they had planned to raise $10,000 in 30 days; instead, they raised $137,417.)

Glif Montage from Studio Neat on Vimeo.

 

If the project goes into production, it'll retail for $25. But for now, there's an interesting twist to their funding: There's only 3,000 spots but they're seeking $50K. But they're not prescribing how much you should pay. Thus, if 3,000 people donate, on average, $10, the project won't come to life. But if they all donate more than a $16.67 average, they'll meet the $50K and everyone will get a Cosmonaut.

That's a fascinating way to get some people to adjust their spending, depending on what other people pay. So far, the average is only running at about $15.26, with 2,155 slots already taken. Which means the average donation has to be over $20.25 to meet their goal. (Obviously, the best place to be in this bidding process is at the end; if the goal is met and there are slots left, you could probably get a Cosmonaut for $.01. But if you wait too long, you'll have to pay the $25 retail. What to do?!)

Our head already hurts thinking the the economics papers that could be written about how people behave in this situation. Long story short, just go here and donate at least $20.25.

COMMENTARY:   I like that Cosmonaut touchscreen pen the most.   The idea of signing documents from your iPhone or iPad.   That's cool stuff.   I got to get me one of those.

One of my all-time success stories is how Scott Wilson, the inventor of the NANO watch, was able to raise nearly $1 million (last time I looked).  Scott was hoping to raise only $15,000.  That's killer. 

I have covered crowdfunding on my blog quite extensively.  You can read about it HERE.  

Need help raising funding for your invention, play, music recording or book?  I can offer you a complete turnkey solution including helping getting you investor-ready, preparing a complete custom investor package (business plans, executive summaries, PPMs, financials, etc.), video production, strategy development in every aspect of your business, and refining and preparing your crowdfunding pitch.  My contact information is listed above.

Courtesy of an article dated March 29, 2011 appearing in Fast Company Design

By TwitterButtons.com  

 

MILAN DESIGNER MAKIO HASUIKE'S INGENIUS LEATHER BRIEFCASE WITH A ZIP-ZAG ZIPPER AND FOLDS FLAT

Thanks to an innovative, zig-zagging zipper, Buccia packs dead flat. But is that really what we need in a briefcase?

If you travel constantly, chances are you're a fiend for anything and everything that packs flat: umbrellas, pillows, nose-hair trimmers -- you name it. Now you can add this sleek -- but flawed -- little briefcase to the list. Designed by Milan-based Makio Hasuike and available at the MoMA Design Store for $198, Buccia collapses flat as a pancake with just a yank of the zipper.

The innovative zipper zigs and zags all the way around the briefcase, letting you unzip the fabric completely, as if peeling an apple in one deliciously deft move. That, in turn, transforms the luggage into something compact and easy to store (or so the thinking goes). An added benefit: The zipper provides endless ways to access the contents of your case. Want to pull your laptop out of the front of the bag instead of the top? Go right ahead.

We worry, though, that the zipper creates more problems than it solves. For starters, a briefcase isn't exactly a bulky item thatneeds to be flattened -- this briefcase, in particular, is already pretty damned tiny. If you can't store it in your suitcase or your hotel room as is, you probably won't be able to store it flat, either.

More troubling, the asymmetrical zipper doesn't make tons of sense when you think about what people actually pack in a briefcase: laptops, yes, but also papers, pencils, iPads, and other little gadgets. We'd hate to unzip the front of the case, only for all that stuff to spill out and make us look about as smooth as Leslie Nielsen. Briefcases -- and purses and wallets and most other luggage -- have right-side-up zippers for a reason: People carry things right-side-up.

COMMENTARY:   That's one slick bag.  Sort of reminds you of one those bags that CIA undercover assassinations use to store all their guns, scopes and other goodies.

If you visit Makio Hasuike's site you will find that he designs all kinds of luxury items including furniture and kitchen counters and cabinets.  The stuff he does is very cool.

Courtesy of an article dated March 25, 2011 appearing in Fast Company Design

By TwitterButtons.com  

 

 

YOUNG GERMAN DESIGNERS BUILD 'EXCENTRICITY', A ROAD WARRIOR BIKE POWERED BY PORTABLE ELECTRIC SCREWDRIVERS

It's like something straight out of the mind of Tim "The Toolman" Taylor... but German. And cooler.

This is hands-down the craziest road vehicle we've seen in a long, long time. Dreamed up by four German design students and built like a cross between a Tron Light Cycle and our childhood tricycle, it accelerates to 18.6 miles per hour, powered by nothing but a pair of Bosch 18-volt screwdrivers.

Granted that's about as fast as, well, our childhood tricycle lumbering down a hill. But it's not nothing, especially when you consider that this thing a.) doesn't have a traditional engine b.) can be made (mostly) out of crap you find in your dad's toolbox and c.) has you staring straight at the frickin' road. We reckon any speed is more than enough speed.

The students -- Nils Ferber, Sebastian Auray, Ruben Faber, and Ludolf von Oldershausen, of HFBK University of Fine Arts Hamburg -- built Excentricity or "EX" for a screwdriver race competition held by another design school in Germany. (Those wacky Germans and their machines!) As Ferber tells Co. in an email, most other entries just rigged existing bicycles, whereas he and his classmates built their ride from scratch. They even designed their own parts in CAD, then had them CNC milled.

How Excentricity works: Battery-operated screwdrivers "screw" into the frame near the rear wheel, powering the bike chain, which then transmits juice to the gearing. The screwdrivers run in the same direction for max power, and overruning clutch gearwheels are used to transmit torque.

 

To accelerate and brake, the driver squeezes the handles. To steer, he wiggles his body, effectively tilting and bending the back wheel. "This is very different from holding a steering wheel or handle bar but makes the driving very intense," Ferber says. "The headlong position and being very close to the ground make you easily forget that you are still not exactly the fastest thing on the road."

COMMENTARY:   If you don't mind being hurt or even killed, then the Excentricy road warrior bike is for you.  Using two 18-volt portable Bosch (German, of course) screwdrivers for power is ingenius.  This could start a new trend in wacky screwdriver-powered riding machines.  According to Nills, the EX bike can go 30 km/h.  The EX bike turns by applying body lean to an ingenius joint which is part of the rear wheel.  This leaves me wondering how long the power will last before you need to recharge the portable screwdrivers batteries, but who cares when you are having so much reckless fun.  Definitely wear a crash helmet and off-road padded outfit if you want to live to ride another day.  Great job Nils Ferber, Sebastian Auray, Ruben Faber, and Ludolf von Oldershausen.    

Courtesy of an article dated March 23, 2011 appearing in Fast Company Design

By TwitterButtons.com    

MIT AERONAUTICAL ENGINEERS INVENT THE TERRAFUGIA TRANSITION FLYING CAR, PRODUCTION STARTS SOMETIME IN LATE 2011

The Jetsons-inspired future that we all dream of inched a little closer to reality today with news that the Terrafugia Transition, a flying car developed by MIT-trained aeronautical engineers and MBA's, will begin limited production in late 2011. The vehicle will be produced in Woburn, Massachusetts--just down the road from company headquarters--with help from 50 lucky workers who will be able to say that they build the futuristic vehicles we were all promised as kids.

The Boston Herald reports that Terrafugia needs to deliver 30 aircraft each year to stay in the black. That's not an easy feat for an entirely new breed of vehicle that costs up to $350,000 a pop. But Terrafugia already has 85 orders for the FAA-approved flying car, so the company can at least make a go of it.

It's street-legal, remember, but that doesn't mean any public road can be cleared for takeoffs and landings. Still, we're a little wary of the Transition's potential to wreak havoc on the roads. Drivers (or pilots) need to have a Sports Pilot license to operate the Transition, but that's an easy requirement to fulfill--20 hours of flight time and a practical test are all that is needed to become certified. With a cruising speed of 115 mph and a 400 mile-range, there is plenty of room for pilots to enter dangerous airspace, either accidentally or on purpose. So here's hoping that Terrafugia works out the logistical kinks of this thing before the first big flying car accident.

 

COMMENTARY:  This car reminds one of that flying car in the James Bond movie "The Man With The Golden Gun".  

Designed by a team of MIT graduates, the Ferragugia flying car converts from a street-legal automobile to a Light Sport aircraft in 30 seconds. A 100 hp, four-cylinder engine powers both the craft's three-bladed propeller for a maximum airspeed of 115 mph and its continuously variable transmission, rear-wheel drive to above 65 mph when on the road. When the wings are folded, the craft easily stores in a home's garage. It can be driven to one's preferred airfield on four DOT-approved tires with full road suspension. An electro-mechanical system is activated from inside the two-person cockpit to deploy the self-locking wings into place for take-off provided by a 1,700' runway. Built to fly within VFR conditions, sophisticated modern avionics aid navigation from a touch-screen LCD. Dual pedals and a joystick manage the craft's flight control surfaces--dual rudders, ailerons, and stabilator--while a steering wheel, accelerator, and brake control its road movement. Its 23-gallon gas tank provides a 425 nautical mile range (35 mpg on the road), indispensable for easy day trips from Long Island to Martha's Vineyard. Carbon fiber, titanium, and aluminum construction. Includes comprehensive familiarization with craft. Requires a Sport Pilot Certificate. Special conditions and guarantee limitations apply. Car mode 6' 8" H x 7' 6" W x 19' 6" L; Aircraft mode 6' 6" H x 26' 6" W x 19' 9" L. (Empty weight 970 lbs.)

If you want to order online click HERE  or call 1-800-227-3528 for details.

Courtesy of an article dated September 9, 2010 appearing in Fast Company Design and Hammacher Schlemmer

By TwitterButtons.com  

 

SIFTEO CUBES REINVENTS TABLE TOP GAME PLAYING WITH CUBES THAT CAN PLAY AN ENDLESS ARRAY OF GAMES

Gadi Amit, the designer who refined the MIT concept for market, on why his design team didn't bother with user-led research.

When Sifteo Cubes debuted officially at CES earlier this year, they sold out in hours -- not much of a surprise considering they’ve been hyped as a reinvention of the very notion of table-top gaming.

 

But the success of these bite-sized motion-sensing wireless computers -- think of them as a combination of building blocks and iPhones -- was hardly a lock and can be attributed in many ways to savvy design by the San Francisco-based consultancy New Deal Design.

New Deal took a pie-in-the-sky gaming concept famously dreamed up by a couple of grad students at the MIT Media Lab and transformed it into a cute, sleek, and at $149 MSRP (or $99 for joining an early discount program), inexpensive product geared toward older children and adults. In short, they created something people would actually want to throw into a shopping cart. And they did it without relying on the usual cacophony of user feedback. “A key issue for Sifteo was that this is not just a toy; it’s a new platform for computing,” New Deal’s Gadi Amit tells Co. “The task for us was to make it much more refined, to make it a true tactile object.”

It’s no small order. Sifteo Cubes are unlike anything else out there. The Cubes, which come in a series, communicate wirelessly with each other and a computer. You download a game or learning tool, and its course is determined by how you manipulate the cubes, whether you’re stacking them up to practice your spelling and math or jostling them to navigate a penguin through a treacherous world. Their genius is in externalizing the computer process -- in giving concrete form to a logic we all know but never see.

New Deal started out with basic usability issues. They added a push-button clickable display, which is more intuitive for today’s gamers (accustomed as they are to mouses) than a Cube that only responds to motion and tilting. They also built a charging dock that holds and juices six Cubes at a time. A notch on the bottom of the dock stores the USB dongle that allows Cubes to connect to the Internet, and a clear plastic cover turns the dock into a carrying case.

Because the Cubes are made to be handled, the way they feel in your grasp was a top priority. New Deal gave them a shiny plastic shell with rounded edges and made sure they had plenty of heft so that they feel substantial when you hold them -- more like a computer than a cheapie plastic toy. A lack of definition between the top and bottom faces frees users to exploit the technology’s numerous interactive possibilities. A tiny lip around the top of the Cube protects the screen without introducing any rough edges. The result, in Amit’s telling, is “like a cross between a Domino, a block, and a pebble” -- in other words, gamer gold.

New Deal also worked to make the Cubes as small as possible. “A very small change in dimensions is very significant in terms of perception of the object,” Amit says. “The difference between 40 millimeters and 42 millimeters square is perceived as a 10 to 20 percent change in volume. You feel it in your hand. … And stuffing a lot of computer into a tiny cube is not easy especially for a startup that doesn’t have the procuring prowess of, say, Apple.” New Deal got the dimensions down to 43 millimeters by 43 millimeters -- smaller than expected, Amit says.

As for the packaging: The designers wanted to appeal to a mature(ish) demographic, so they eschewed the explosion of color splayed on most toy boxes and opted for a simple pattern of shimmering Cubes to subtly convey the game’s interactive elements.

The most intriguing part of the story here is that New Deal didn’t bother with user-led research. They simply assumed they had made something people would love -- like some other companies you might’ve heard of. “With cutting-edge technology, people don’t know what to say or how to treat it,” Amit says. “Either they’re being polite or over the top with their reflections. Here, you have a totally new object. It doesn’t have clear cultural grounding. ...Our job was to create a classic with immediate acceptance.” And you can’t do that by going to Joe Public.

Cubes start shipping to "Early Access" members this month (more on that here) and will be available to the wider public later this year. Check back on Sifteo's website for updates. 

COMMENTARY:    Sifteo's Cubes' modular approach allows the Cubes to become an electronic table game with virtually endless possibilities.  The software that comes with the kit, controls everything, sending wireless commands for each game to each Cube.  It is a sort of wireless Sony Playstation console which allows you to select which game you want to play, then each Cube executes that game depending on the positioning of the Cubes on a table top.  The sensing capability embedded into each Cube is what makes the whole thing work.  I can definitely vision a series of Apple or Android apps running on tablets in the very near future.  The design engineers at New Deal call Sifteo's Cubes a "a new platform for computing".  A rather crude one at that. Whether this is true or not, these pupplies sure look like a lot of fun.  No wonder they sold out at the Las Vegas CES show.   

Back on March 8, 2011, I profiled Modular Robotics' Cubelets, a robotic modular toy kit. Cubelets do not rely on software to control the movement or logic of the cubes. Each Cubelet has its own logic board, embedded software, micro-motors and wheels that control the movement.  With Cubelets, you can create toys that can think, sense and move, in an endless array of possibilities, depending on how the Cubelets are combined.  The advantage of Cubelets is that the Cubelets are combined a certain way act autonomously like a robot, with each Cubelet communicating with each other and working without the need of external commands.  

Either way, I like them both. 

Courtesy of an article dated March 18, 2011 appearing in Fast Company Design

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