Biomutualisms
by Zog
I’m not sure the term is going to catch on, being a bit too attached to the biological, but Robert Full uses the term biomutualism to describe the way multiple disciplines working on related projects can create design inspiration greater than the sum of its parts. He explains it by way of an example in his own studies on gecko adhesives, and how his cooperation with other disciplines is resulting in breakthroughs in materials sciences, biology, and robotics.
There is some great footage here of new discoveries relating to tails and how animals use them for everything from self-righting to guided flight. A must watch for anyone designing robots.
SteamPunk Computer Mods
by Zog
The above SteamPunk computer casemod was commissioned as a giveaway for a new computer game. Jake of all Trades did a great job of it. I’vc seen quite a few SteamPunk computer cases go by recently, but this was the best. I wonder if it is water cooled?
Update: The above SteamPunk Flash Drive was a one of a kind piece. I hope this inspires a wave of flash drives.
I’ll post any other SteamPunk computer mods I come across here.
Kinetic Sculpture Race 2009
by Zog
We sent zogdo senior video correspondent and garden coach Genevieve Schmidt to the 2009 Kinetic Sculpture Race (Humboldt, California) and caught the above footage of the race. Humboldt County hosts this race every Memorial Day weekend, and it draws quite a crowd of bizarrely dressed spectators. Many of them dress like this on daily basis. The star of the show for the second year running is the dragon built by Duane Flatmo out of hubcaps and similar materials. This year it has a fiery new trick, and it’s a real crowd pleaser.
I’ve been to at least a dozen of these races now, and the quality of the entries and the size of the crowd varies wildly. I’d say the best one I went to was about four years ago, back when Yakima was still a leading competitor.They were connected with sculptures like an early variation of the Hippypotamus, which this year came complete with sage smoke billowing out of its nostrils. In the past couple of years, the race has vastly increased in notoriety, making the front page of Digg last year, and the front page of CNN two days before the race began this year.
Some of the new arrivals this year included The Octomom, complete with eight tentacles for grasping her young.
The Glory Hogs would occasionally stop to barbecue and hand out free hotdogs to their adoring fans. We got a great rooftop view of the race. 
I hadn’t seen this beetle (firefly?) before, but I didn’t catch its name.
The symbol of the race is the Kinetic Chicken, personified in this sculpture that arrived with great fanfare last year. It came into the race at the last minute with a huge entourage of chicken headed cyclists, towering over the crowd in chromed glory.
Also new was this skunk.
Quite a crowd of people follow the race on bicycles and skateboards, and give quite a representation of local color, like this dog, and this protester with a noble message about personal responsibility and smog reduction.
I’ll end here for now with a giant angler fish, a closeup of the dragon head, and a great show of Flatmo helping Twinkle light their star.
Update: Dead Man’s Drop and the dunes
All of the more interesting sculptures managed to make it to the sand dunes this year.
I don’t have the weight specs for thedragon, but it’s nothing you want to be pedaling up a sand dune. Here, the pit crew helps out a bit.
Dead Man’s Drop is a steep section off the back of a sand dune leading to a small trail through the trees. The dragon made it down safely, unlike Big Top (red and white in the right corner of the picture) . A note to anyone considering purchasing a Flip Video Recorder: they have a nasty habit of suddenly dead batteries, which loses the enitre currently recording section of footage, however long it may be. It cost us a great film from right below big top as it rolled down the hill.
The spashdown in the bay:
We arrived at the bay to an icy windy day, spectators shivering in their down coats, while Zog, true to form showed up in a T-shirt.
This guy in the parking lot had his dog jumping through a bicycle tire ad nauseum; why? because he could I suppose. I have a cat that will retrieve thrown asparagus, but you don’t see me bringing him to perform at events.
The bay crossing portion of the race takes place with the racers going down a ramp into the 50°F waters of Humboldt Bay, many of them submerged to the knees in barely seaworthy craft. The most notable difficulty I saw this year was this giant picnic basket. As soon as it hit the water, we could hear loud cracking noises as something went horribly wrong inside. The side panel of the float (using the term loosely) was meant to open up as their escape hatch, but it was obstructed by the dock. Everything turned out ok, but I doubt they made it upwind with such poor aerodynamics and some obvious structural issues.
While it is more mechanically interesting than truly sculptural, I’ve been quite impressed with Twinkle (formerly The Patriot Act). They’ve had some time to perfect things, and what they have ended up with is a machine that made the race over land and sea both look effortless. I didn’t spot them in the dunes, so I don’t know how it fared in sand, but the back wheel is used for steering on land and as a rudder at sea, and those big wheels with the paddles on the sides really worked great.
The Flatmo Dragon took to the water like a swan. A terrible fire breathing swan of DOOM! A great improvemnt over last year making the headlines worldwide after capsizing. This has truly become a remarkable machine that would draw crowds in any event on the planet.
I’ll likely more or less end this post here for the season, but if you were in the race or would like to see more of a particular entry, I do have a lot more photos. Feel free to comment below.
Vibram Five Finger Shoes (reviews)
by Zog
On the recommendation of Tim Ferris, we went out to our local sporting goods shop to see if they had any of the new Vibram five finger shoes in stock. We were in luck!
I’m a real shoe snob. I still scour e-bay daily just to see if anyone is selling my favorite shoes, not made since 2001. I don’t like shoelaces. I’m of the opinion that tying things to our feet really should have gone out of style with the bustle (I prefer to be asked if my shoes were made by aliens). My usual shoes are lightweight and form fitting running shoes, air padded, so when I tried on the Vibrams, I was expecting something similar with something scratchy between my toes. I was wrong.
I’d seen the pictures online, so when the shoe dude brought out a pair for me to try on, the first thing that struck me was the soles. They aren’t flat and ridgy like shoes, they are smooth and padded like the soles of your feet. If you push on the shoe from the inside, the soles split into tiny herringbone incisions (they refer to it as razor siping). These provide awesome traction. The upper felt like wetsuit material. Pulling the shoe on was easy except for the little toe. I’ve wondered if the shoe would be better of with only four toes instead of five, combining the smallest two, but I really think they just made the smallest toe a tiny bit on the large side. Once the shoe is on though, it didn’t seem to be a problem. The shoes are shockingly comfortable. I wasn’t expecting that at all.
Walking around in these isn’t like light running shoes at all. It feels like walking around in thick socks, but with the protection of a tough sole under your foot. I expected the wetsuit-like material to make my feet really hot and sweaty, but it really didn’t. I bet these would be unbeatable on a rocky shore or tide-pool. They don’t seem like they would suffer at all out in the gritty sand either, since there isn’t really anywhere for them to chafe. I was trying on the Fivefingers FLOW model. They had another model, the KSO, which has a nice fabric mesh upper instead of the rubbery stuff. Trying these on took things one step further. I no longer felt like I was wearing thick socks, but more like being barefoot with tough soles. They are super light-weight and breathable. I bought a pair of the mesh shoes.
Wearing these toe shoes is such a pleasure that I found myself wearing them most of the day, around the house and in the yard. I don’t tend to wear shoes unless I’m going out, so this is a big seal of approval. After wearing them all weekend, I decided to wear them to work, which is about half a mile away. Walking to work, I took things a little slower than usual. The shoes didn’t hurt, but I could tell they were using a different set of muscles. When I got to work and sat down however, I felt a burning sensation across the front of the pad of my feet, like you might get from a few minutes of walking across asphalt barefoot. It didn’t go away, so I switched back to regular shoes for the day. I think I was really close to giving myself a blister. I would recommend your first brisk walk in these be no more than a quarter mile with a day afterwards to see how everything feels. I have sore muscles down my calf and Achilles, and in my foot, which considering how much walking I do and how often I’m barefoot, surprised me. These shoes are marketed towards marathon runners, and I hear that you just need to adjust to them. It didn’t feel like a flaw in the shoe, except that maybe a bit more than the usual proportion of stepping force is applied to the front of the pad. They don’t feel like they slip or chafe, and it would be hard to roll your ankle. I would say that as compared to normal shoes they vastly increase the pleasure of walking on natural terrain and indoors, and somewhat decrease the pleasure of walking on asphalt.
I’m giving myself a couple days off from the shoes to make sure I’ve recovered from the first outing and then I’m excited to wear them again, this time with no extended walks until I’ve worn them a bit more. I’ll update this post further as I break them in some more.
Update: After a couple of days of rest, I was able to walk a few miles over the course of the day with no ill effects. My first attempt at running lasted a coupe blocks before I could really feel it down the back of my legs and quit just to be safe. I ended up with sore calf muscles (in a good way). The shoes do put a lot more emphasis on lower leg and foot muscles while running. After two weeks, I’m now able to walk several miles at a stretch on asphalt without discomfort. I wore my five fingers shoes to the Kinetic Sculpture Race, and they were great in the sand. They didn’t pick up much sand, and since your foot doesn’t slide inside, there is none of that sandpaper feeling at tender spots on your foot.
I’ve been wearing them everywhere, and without socks. They do need to be washed often. I threw mine in the washing machine and they came out great with no sings of wear. I’m finding myself unwilling to wear my other shoes now, so I’m going to buy Vibrams to wear while my others are waiting to be washed. They don’t soak up much water when washed since they don’t have all the spongy stuff most shoes do, so I just wore them rather than drying them and it didn’t seem weird.
I know a lot of you don’t live near stores where you can buy Vibram Fivefingers, and most of our readers are international, so I’m posting an amazon link (international variants at the bottom of the resulting page) which I still find to be the safest and most convenient, but I’ll keep an eye out for better deals and post them here as I find them.
There are several colors and styles. I went with black mesh KSO (pictured). The well placed strap system makes them flexible enough that being a size off shouldn’t be a big deal. These are listed in European sizing, so I’ve put up a sizing chart, which I found to be quite accurate.
Here you can find Assorted Vibrams available on amazon
Go DiscoBot!
by Zog
Here we have some video of the Australian 2009 hexapod dance off. There were some great conteders this year. I was rooting for the discobot all the way! It has some smooth moves, and a great outfit for a dance droid. Alas, the competition was won by the bot with the hat and cigarette. What message does this send to the little bots out there? They are all going to end up with intake vent cancer.
Whyfore?
by Zog
There are times when inspiration comes, not from the craziest new gadget, but from something as simple as looking into the mind of a cat and having a good laugh. Kernal assists me in this fashion daily.
The feline in the video above makes me wonder if Schrödinger came up with his morbid and disturbing cat analogy after noticing that cats see the state of objects very differently than we do. They don’t see them as constant when not observed directly. After having seen what is in a box, if you move the box a foot, they will wonder anew, what might now be in the box?
In the below video, we have a cat absolutely consumed by the question of where the water goes when it flushes the toilet. The focus of their curiosity is legendary. What strikes me is how the owners always seem to feel the need to interrupt. The cat always has the same reaction. It looks at them like, “What are you laughing at? Do You mind? I’m trying to do this thing…”
There Is No Fate But What We Make For Ourselves
by Zog
Don’t fear the future. Technology all through the ages has brought both good things and bad, but most of us wouldn’t give up our electricity, or the motor just because of the losses along the way. Those societies which have survived and thrived haven’t done so by avoiding progress. The same can be said for fields like genetics and robotics. These fields will progress. It is our choice whether we guide their path, or some place like China does, but either way, technology is advancing, and it is doing so faster than any time in history. The changing face of war is hopefully leading us away from mutually assured destruction. The more intelligent machines get, the more the human condition improves, not in every way, but in general. In the above video, Jon Stewart speaks with P.W. Singer about our rapid move towards a robotic military. Below, Singers more in depth talk at TED.
How to Levitate Objects With Your Mind (open Thread)
by Zog
A few things I took note of recently, but didn’t find the time to write up properly:
Upon going through my logs, I was amused note how highly I ranked for the search term “how to levitate objects with your mind”. I’ve never written about any such thing, but it reminded me of a couple of recent products:
- The Mind Flex (made by Mattell) Is a new game with a sensor that reads your brain waves and uses them to control a fan that flies a ball around an obstacle course. I’m not sure how much this gives you for those ‘real’ telekinesis skills, but it looks like a good party game after a few drinks.
Buy the Mattel Mindflex Game here.
- The Force Trainer works along the same lines, levitating a ping pong ball in a tube.
- Emotiv is a new (out soon) video game controller headset that reads brain waves in order to perform game functions. It isn’t going to replace your old controller in the short term, but may be handy for things like switching weapons and function keys. If I were severely handicapped, I would be filled with a lot of hope by these devices. I bet Stephen Hawking would dominate with this (get well soon man). The OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator
- On the levitation front, we have already posted the FunFlyStick, and the Levitating Coaster, which can levitate objects up to two pounds.
RealView3D is a 3D scanner. Just place your object on the turntable, and the scanner will spin it and scan.
This guy built an awesome mousetrap out of delicately balanced kitchen items and a strobe shutter camera to capture the whole escapade on film. Cute pictures.
Is someone always one step ahead of me? I plotted here to build a portable pathway out of moss to follow me around, but this guy did it.
Please consider this to be an open post as well. Feel free to post a link to your blog, throw up a link to something you think should be featured on this site, or talk about what is on your mind. All comments will be moderated, so don’t be spammy.
Quorum Sensing and Swarmbot Design
by Zog
In this Ted Talk video, Bonnie Bassler speaks about the inter and intra species communications between bacteria and how central they are to life and death on a greater scale. Bacteria were the designers of cellular communication, organization, and cooperation that are used throughout life on the planet. After unimaginable generations of evolution, they have achieved some very effective methods; methods which could be applied to anything from communication and cooperation between tiny swarms of robots, to replicationg and self regulating software routines, traffic regulation, automated disaster response….
She is focusing on Quorum sensing, which essentially refers to chemical hormones, both general and species specific, released by the bacteria in order to give them information about things like their population density and diversity. She has been working on synthetic false signals that will either inhibit or assist in quorum sensing in order to create a new class of antibiotic and probiotic treatments.
Robot Penguins: Festo does it again
by Zog
Pengiuns sure do seem to be getting a lot of play in recent years. Festo has now targeted them for their latest aquatic and lighter than air robotics. They seem to be doing two versions of these, just like they did with their Robotic Jelly Fish. in their latest promotional video, they show off aquatic penguin robots which use sonar to navigate and communicate, some Mylar, lighter than air penguins reminiscent of that awesome Fin-Fish by LaChLuVe last year, and several other projects involving biomimicry and affordable rapid prototyping.
Update: Here is a video showcasing the air penguins
Update: And more footage of the robotic sea penguins:
Update: PDF file for the bionic aqua penguins with detailed specs, capabilities, and photos.
