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Announcing the 2015 INDEX: Award Winners

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Every year we look forward to the INDEX: Awards, a program that staunchly stands by its mission to uphold designs that improve life and seek out sustainable solutions to the most pressing global challenges we are facing. This year, 1,123 nominations were whittled down to the 5 projects you see below, all of which expand our understanding of design and its ability to enact change. We'll keep this short so that you can get to the meaty stuff, so grab a refreshment and settle in because it's a long one (and the videos are must-sees!)

PEEK RETINA

Once affixed to a smart phone, the Peek Retina adapter takes high quality images of the retina, which can be examined for any irregularities.
Used in conjunction with the adapter, the Peek Retina app creates a simulation of the patient's weakened vision and contrasts it with healthy vision.

According to the World Health Organization, 285 million people are currently suffering from visual impairment around the world. This staggering statistic is only worsened by the knowedge that four out of five people who are blind don't need to be—they simply didn't receive timely treatment for curable diseases. Peek Retina is part of an initiative to bring high-standard eye examinations to low or middle-income nations (where 90% of visually impaired people live) through portable kits that make eye exams far more accessible and easy to administer. The simple system is composed of an adapter that fits over a smart phone camera to scan the eye and an accompanying app that provides a series of important tools, like the ability to share test results with off-site professionals for further diagnostic support. 

The system directly addresses the main issue for eye care: retinal diseases are a major cause of visual impairment but it is almost impossible to transport the expensive, unwieldy equipment normally used in exams to remote countries. "Peek Retina creates an opportunity for anyone to leverage the knowledge of experts anywhere in the world, in an incredibly smart and low cost way—in other words, the device is a great connector," noted jury member Veronica D'Souza. Peek will soon be available to all European Union Countries and steps are being taken to gain approval with the FDA in the USA as well as develop distribution models in Kenya, Botswana, Tanzania and Mali.

DUOLINGO

Duolingo currently offers 23 languages (and counting!) on their language education platform.
Perhaps Duolingo's most significant contribution is its ability to revolutionize the internet. A statistic from their research team states that if one million people used Duolingo to learn Spanish, the entire Spanish Wikipedia could be translated into English in as little as 80 hours.

If learning a foreign language is on your bucket list, the award-winning Duolingo language education platform might be the most efficient way to cross that off sooner rather than later. Available to anyone with an Internet connection, the game-like system breaks up the road to fluency into modules that cover everything from simple everyday phrases and correct pronunciation to more complex tasks, like learning how to discuss politics. The system uses rewards and reminders to keep you on top of your lessons and make sure you're making daily progress—the app has been conceived to fit into any spare moments that crop up during the day, and even a 3-minute quick exercise will replenish your progress bars. Research has shown that 34 hours spent on the platform results in the equivalent of an 11-week university semester!

Duolingo's ability to facilitate global communication has never been more relevant and the program carries the tools to enable better cross-societal connections. Its long-term goals include opening up the Internet through the mindset that everyone is a valuable translator. For example, a user might be presented with a sentence in Portugese from a Wikipedia article and after correctly translating it, the data is saved and available to everyone. "It's a great movement toward human-based computation and citizen research," commented jury member Patrick Frick. "It's one of the best ways of answering the question: how can you effectively utilize the skills of 7 billion people on the planet?"

SKY URBAN VERTICAL FARMING SYSTEM

The concept of vertical farming can be traced back to the Indigenous people of South America and East Asia who used vertically layered growing techniques to produce rice and other crops.
Sky Greens towers currently produce threetypes of vegetables—nai bai, xiao bai cai and Chinese cabbage—which can be harvested every 28 days.

On a landmass of about 277 square miles, Singapore houses more than five million people. This formidable lack of space has led to unsustainable importation practices, with over 93% of fresh produce being brought into Singapore from countries both near and far. Sky Urban Vertical Farming System begins to address these issues locally, as demand for food becomes an increasingly global issue. The project devises a series of tower-like outdoor greenhouses which are able to grow a range of vegetables, ultimately producing 10 times more food per land area unit. The rotating shelves are powered by a hydraulic system which uses only 0.5 liters of water per day—which is later recycled by watering the vegetables themselves. 

The project speaks to inventor Jack Ng's vision of an Agripolis: the integration of architecture, urban planning and cultivation technologies. This is an initial step toward a system "where agriculture is fully assimilated into urban environments not just as a sustainable and replicable ecosystem but also modern lifestyles incorporating learning and recreation," explains Ng. Since 2012, the system has been in use and proving that vertical farming is capable of competing with, and even surpassing, the results of traditional farming. "We've seen many before but this is actually working and is at the top of its' field—it is a brilliant combination of technology and design thinking," explains jury member Simona Rocchi.

TESLA POWERWALL

The home batteries—costing approximately $3,500—are compact and easy-to-install. They can be mounted on walls and up to nine batteries can be stacked to create a large power source.
"It's the most promising design we've seen that will encourage people to use renewables and and to level out energy consumption," said Jury Member Katinka von der Lippe.

Though solar power has become much more prevalent in homes and businesses, the lack of a system to store excess energy has maintained the need to purchase energy from the power grid, continuing the use of carbon-electricity. Enter the Tesla Powerwall, a rechargeable, lithium-ion battery that stores solar energy generated during the day for use at night. Starting with making households more independent from the power grid, the infinitely scalable system also proposes a way of thinking about the future of energy use worldwide. "It's an absolute game-changer," stated jury member Arnold Wasserman. "Energy self-sufficiency—what could be bigger than that?" 

With the first round of Tesla Powerwalls slated to be shipped as soon as next month, Musk already has his eye on the larger picture. His system has the ability to transform the future of power use: 160 million packs could transition the US to renewable energy while 900 million units would be capable of shifting the entire world's energy needs. "This is within the power of humanity to do. It is not impossible, it is something that we can do," he reminds us. 

THE OCEAN CLEANUP ARRAY

Plastic in the oceans has become one of the world's biggest pollution problems, killing up to 100,000 birds, fish and other marine life every year.
"Using vessels and nets to collect the plastic from one garbage patch would take about 79,000 years and tens of billions of dollars," the Ocean Cleanup Array team reports. "Such an operation would cause significant harm to sea life and generate huge amounts of CO2 and other emissions."

We've previously marveled at 21-year-old Boyan Slat's ingenious solution for cleaning up plastic pollution from the world's oceans—a precocious will to tackle the big problems that completely embodies the ethos of the INDEX Awards. Eight million tons of plastic are discarded into oceans every year—a number that is ever increasing. Gyres, the large current systems in the sea, naturally concentrate most of this plastic into five large areas around the world, often referred to as islands of garbage.  The Ocean Cleanup Array proposes a passive system for collecting this debris, by setting up a series of floating structures in the center of the gyres to gather the plastic. First, rows of floating barriers work like a giant funnel to suck in the debris while platforms attached to the barriers extract and filter the plastic from the sea before bringing it to land, where it is stored in containers before being recycled. 

"We live in a plastic age and we've already recognized a number of global challenges related to the oceans—it's about time we're serious about a resource that makes up over 70% of the world's surface," said jury member Katinka von der Lippe. "It's a beautiful intellect to use nature to your advantage, this is great example of an initiative that is driven by broader principles to improve life for all humanity and our surroundings for many years to come," added Lim Chee Onn.


A Mathematician's Elliptical Pool Table

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For nearly 40 years, the Snooker and Pool Table Company of Essex, England has been producing bespoke billiards tables in a variety of styles. But this year they received a commission that must've had them scratching their heads: The client wanted a table shaped like an ellipse.

That's because the client, Alex Bellos, is a somewhat eccentric mathematician who wanted a way to physically experience a basic principle of geometry:

Of course, having a custom table made seems like a lot of trouble to go through, just to confirm something discovered by the Greeks some millennia ago. So Bellos also designed a game that could be played on the table:

The first Loop tournament was held earlier this summer, and Bellos hopes the game will spread. In addition to traveling with the table to "venues, festivals and schools," Bellos will facilitate with orders for those who wish to buy their own.

Jaguar Designer Cesar Pieri's Auto Art

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As the Creative Design Manager at Jaguar Advanced Design, Cesar Pieri spends a lot of time thinking about cars. So when he decided to take up painting as a creative outlet, he found inspiration from his day job. Using Jaguar hoods (bonnets) as canvases, Pieri has created a collection of fine art pieces prized by collectors from around the world.

Here, Pieri shares the inspiration for his auto art, thoughts on designing for transport versus emotion, and what cars are in his dream garage.

Core77: What inspired you to create this series of artworks?

Cesar Pieri: Since my job is designing Jaguars all day, I started doing some artworks for myself, inspired by F-types, Project-7, XEs, etc. At the same time Sir Chris Hoy, who had been a Jaguar ambassador, was leaving and we needed to give him a gift, so we talked about doing some artwork for him.

I wanted to do something different, rather than something digital. I wanted it to be hand-painted, trying to do the opposite of my everyday job which, because you're fighting for millimeters, is very precise work! This was about being much looser, letting it flow.

Then I went mad, I bought 19 Jaguar bonnets (hoods) on eBay! My wife hated me; I had bonnets everywhere—they're still everywhere. I started painting on them, learning the process. Painting on metal is a completely different method; it doesn't stick. I had to create a process for myself. So if you compare the first one to the last, there's a progression in the technique—now I can control the process much better.

Is it important for designers to have a release from the constraints of daily work?

It depends on the designer. For me, yes. I never thought about selling these—it's just a way of challenging myself—but now I'm selling to collectors in Japan, USA, UK, Brazil and Italy.

What is your advice for someone starting a career in car design?

It's very difficult when you don't have experience! The biggest problem when you start out is if you think you already know the process. You're not a design director, yet! You must be humble, you must learn things…then, if you work really hard, one day you might become someone.

When you start out you know how to sketch like a printing machine. But in the end, you need to understand that you are there to solve a problem—you need to find a way to solve that problem first, and get it into production.

So, understand packaging, engineering, materials. You can't re-invent the wheel, and you must understand the environment you're working in; be respectful of it. When I started, I tried to understand what design was, product design, marketing, production processes, engineering limitations, etc.

Gert Hildebrand [Quoros, previously MINI] told me: "You can design anything that you want…but first, design what you've been asked to do."

You may have to design boring stuff, but make sure you do it right. First you deliver what you were asked to do, then, if you want to go mad and you have time, go for it. Really understand the design language of the brand, why the company is where it is now; the heritage, the past— you need to understand that before you can design.

It's a team job too. You might become a top designer or you might be sketching mirror caps and wheels for years! Just remember—we get paid to do this, it's fun! Every day is different.

Really understand the design language of the brand, why the company is where it is now; the heritage, the past.

When did you realize you wanted to be a car designer?

I always liked cars from a very early age, but I remember very clearly—I was with my mother, she was mad with me for some reason, and driving. I kept pushing her, and she got mad, and drove really fast—I loved it! I was like, "Wow, this is really cool!" I loved the sense of speed, mixed with danger. That was when I realized I loved cars.

How did your career start?

I tried to become a designer for many years. I studied architecture, worked in graphic design, and then product design. In Brazil, Italy, US, and the UK. Then I started finding automotive design work and worked for a consultancy where GMC was a client. Finally, I did a Masters in Transportation Design at the Polytechnic de Milano in 2010. It's a process that took some time, but I always drew cars even when I was designing other things.

What's your take on autonomous cars?

I think that queuing in traffic is a pain in the ass! If I could go through emails, read the paper, etc, and arrive at work fresh, it's a good thing. But you must be able to take control. From that perspective, sports cars will always be around. If you want to race the thing, you need to be able to just switch off all the controls and go fast when you want…

I think that's why we're so passionate about classic cars. If you take the emotion out of a modern car, you start to see classic cars as gold. They're honest. And so in the future I can see two types of cars. The first you could call 'petrol domestics'—by that I mean simple, low-maintenance appliances that get you from A to B. The second is the 'proper car,' as it was in the past. It can go fast, it's interactive. Two different functions; transport and emotion. It's like in design: we take the best designers and get the passion and emotional design from them, and there's also the workaday designer who does the 'regular' design.

Do you think the creative processes we use are evolving?

Everything that happens creates an influence: great movies, great designs, great music. If you see something and you think: "That's cool, how does it work?"—sketch it. Try to keep all the influences that inspire you.

What's changed now is that my daughter has a bigger image bank than Michelangelo! They had crazy brains, these artists and inventors, but now we have access to images from all around the world. Flying machines—they had to imagine those! Today we have many more options. We have the tech, but we can be lazy; we don't explore in the way people used to have to. So, explore, ask why, like they did in the past. Also, ask why not? You need to push, chase, explore. It's an attitude.

That's why being in the advanced design group is great…you can go mad in the creative process. But we also need to figure out how can we create what we design. It's the perfect balance of creativity and reality.

Finally, what's in your dream garage?

An Alfa 33 Stradale a Lamborghini Muira, an early Audi Quattro UR, a Jaguar D-Type and a Ferrari250GTO.

The Jaguar Bonnet Artwork Collection is now on view at the Heritage Motor Centre in Gaydon, UK through November 2015.

Knife Week: Midori Hamono Chef Knives

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It's Knife Week at Hand-Eye Supply! Get 25% off all knives in stock with the code "KnifeWeek2015" now through the end of Saturday 8.29.15!

It's not all pocket knives and pencils at Hand-Eye Supply. Today we're celebrating the good-looking and great-feeling Midori Hamono kitchen knives. Midori Hamono — which roughly translated means 'Green Cutlery' — makes three classic styles of handmade kitchen knife, widely used in Japan and applicable in kitchens around the world. 

Midori knives feature a thin blade with a professional grade VG-10 stainless steel core, 15 layers of laminated stainless Damascus cladding, a 'tsuchime' hammer marked finish, and a full-tang hardwood handle. VG-10 steel was first developed in Takefu, in the Fukui Prefecture of Japan. The region was formerly known as Echizen province and was a major cutlery and sword-making center for centuries. In addition to its excellent edge-retention and resilience against rust, you can tell VG-10 is great because it means "gold" and "10." 

The blades are forged and layered, then ground thin for a double-beveled blade that makes quick time through anything in front of you. The dappling of the hammer marks is traditionally used to prevent foods from sticking to the side of the knife for cleaner cuts and more controlled workspace. We think the hand-touched appearance fits with the love and personality that goes into cooking, like the wabi sabi version of modern blade kullens.

Santoku are all-purpose chefs' knives. Loosely translated 'Santoku' means "three virtues" for the knife's adeptness at fine slicing, dicing and mincing. They are long, slightly curved, and gently pointed, to fit a wide range of uses and foods, from sashimi to subtle garnishes.

The boldly blunted "Nakiri" style vegetable knife is flat-faced and point-free for easy accurate slicing and dicing. It's an ideal prep knife, safe in cramped quarters and particularly advantageous for bulky foods and fine dicing. When used in an up-and-down motion (rather than rocking) it glides through even slippery foods with comfortable control, allowing for more attractive and even pieces.  

The mini Midori paring knife is small but strongly recommended for all kinds deft work. Every kitchen needs a tough and nimble paring knife, and this full-tang damascus style will take care of your peeling, coring, artisanal cheese slicing and way way more. 

Check out this beautiful family of kitchen pros, available from $80-$135 at Hand-Eye Supply. 

Cool knife not to scale.

Team USA Retooling for Giant Robot Duel vs. Japan

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Preparations are underway for the U.S. vs. Japan giant robot fighting match. As you probably remember, Team Japan's skipper, Kogoro Kurata, accepted the challenge under the condition that melee combat be part of the contest. "Come on, guys, make [your robot] cooler," Kurata said at the time. "Just building something huge and sticking guns on it [is so] Super American."

That means MegaBots is going to have to retool their 15-foot-tall Mark II with at least one arm that can punch, grab or wrassle. They'll have to upgrade the armor to withstand whatever Kurata's Suidobashi Heavy Industry 'bot will have up (or on) its sleeve. They'll also have to re-think the robot's "feet," which are currently tracked, to be able to withstand a punch and keep its footing. And of course, the robot will need "an incredibly sweet paint job. While not strictly required, this is a matter of national pride."

Hence the MegaBots Kickstarter campaign:

Their $500,000 target is the bare minimum required for basic upgrades, but the team is actually hoping to raise more:

At $750,000 they'd be able to incorporate "an array of melee and ranged weapon systems options" like "crushing and grasping claws, pile drivers, shields, pneumatically-driven fists, cannons of all shapes and sizes, and flamethrowers (just in case)."

At $1,000,000 they'd get to work with a U.S. team that participated in the DARPA Robotics Challenge to tweak their machine's balance, so it doesn't fall over after eating a haymaker.

At $1.25 million they'd get access to NASA's life safety systems to protect the pilot. I thought the same thing as you—why the heck is this one so far down the list? "We need make sure we can fight as aggressively as possible while also not blacking out from impacts. Safety 4th, folks," writes the MegaBots team.

Finally, $1.5 million allows them to get aforementioned sweet paint job.

Since MegaBots will be decommissioning the existing guns on the Mark II, they want to send them off with a bang. Fan feedback indicated Arnold Schwarzenegger was the most desired man for this job, so the team is trying to get him into the cockpit to be the last to fire the guns:

By the way, the MegaBots team took Kurata's verbal jab to heart, creating a T-shirt (one of the funding rewards) utilizing his phrase:

At press time the campaign had reached $380,000, and there's still 20 days to go.

Brass, Walnut & Technology: Love Hultén's Beautiful Furniture Combines Old-School and Hi-Tech

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There are not many designers who could take the concept of a 19th-Century writing desk and turn it into a modern-day soldering station with a built-in computer. There are fewer designers still who could then actually build the thing. But take a look at this:

As you can see, Gothenburg-based Love Hultén is not your average designer. What you see above is his piece called Tempel, a combination storage unit, soldering station and computer workstation.

The integration of electronic equipment such as a built-in high-end computer and a 2.1 speaker system really enables it to function as a high-tech working environment. The inside also features a motor driven hidden pop-up 24? monitor covered in a walnut frame and a built-in soldering/electronic working station with customized tools, tailored after the owner's needs. Every detail is processed and adapted to fit the concept in whole. The tech panels may look like something taken from a James Bond movie, but everything displayed has a function. The backlit reservoir hosts an effervescent liquid down the left panel, which exposes the the computer's beautiful cooling system.

Take a look at how he's rigged the monitor to pop up:

I think it's safe to say your design and craftsmanship is well-respected when Sweden's own School of Design & Crafts commissions you to create pieces just for them. Tasked with creating lecture podiums, Hultén whipped something up that stores a light for reading off of paper, a flatscreen monitor, and even the speaker itself (done pop-up style) to broadcast the speech:

The Hultén piece currently making the blog rounds is a real show-stopper: What appears to be a walnut briefcase actually unfurls to reveal his Battlecade, a two-person gaming machine that references the classic "Battleship:"

Wondering how he reconciled the joysticks and the folding action? Like this:

Hultén, by the way, is a one-man operation, designing and constructing everything himself in his Gothenburg workshop. Please check out more of his stuff here.

A Design Mystery: Why are People at This Store Consistently Misusing This Product?

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Here's one of those bread-and-butter design problems that alerts you to the importance of context. It's simple enough to design a coffee dispenser in a studio, where you've worked out people's average heights and eyelines and calculated how they'll interact with the device. Then it goes out into the real world, where unforeseen human behavior leads to unintended consequences.

This one comes to us from California-based Eugenio Leon. On the Core77 boards, he writes (edited here for clarity):

Every now and then I bump into products and situations that could perhaps be better designed, here's one of them. This is at my local Trader Joe's, a grocery store, which [graciously] provides coffee while you shop. They initially provided this type of carafe:
After they replaced it with the kind you see below, I asked what was wrong with the original one. They told me that people on wheelchairs had a hard time reaching them. The counter is roughly three feet off of the ground and the original carafe is about a foot tall. I imagine when a wheelchair user pushed the top of the carafe to dispense, the carafes would tilt and land on the wheelchair user since the force was coming from below.
So they switched to this style of dispenser:
The first problem seems to have been solved by the new dispenser—which ironically brought a new problem: Now folks can't figure out that you have to place the cup on the dot, so there's a lot of spillage, even with the sign. (That sign keeps getting bigger, by the way.) It actually seems to work fine for people on wheelchairs, it is everyone else that seems to be having a hard time placing the cups on the dot.

I did some poking around, and the model of machine appears to be this Bunn/Zojirushi Thermal Server

Let's zoom in and lighten up both Leon's photo and a press photo of the device to take a better look at the design:

The user interface appears to follow basic rules of good design: The button is a different color and features an icon of fingers above it for good measure. There is no question which part of the machine you're meant to interact with.

The cavity indicates, through basic physical language, that the cup is meant to be nestled inside. Furthermore, a white dot and even a raised plastic reticle clearly indicate where the cup is meant to be centered.

Despite all of these measures, people are placing the cup in a location (underneath the button, I'd imagine) that causes the coffee stream to miss. What do you reckon is the problem?

The only thing I can come up with is that folks in the store are regular shoppers who have become conditioned by the first design. Let's take a look at that one again, a little larger:

So there we have a cylinder and a protuberance. The button atop the cylinder is not a different color and bears no icon, but it is large and the reveal around it indicates it is distinct from the rest of the housing up top.

The protuberance is clearly the spout, but I'd actually imagine this design would create more spillage. The precise location of the nozzle within the protuberance is not obvious, and in the photos up top we can see that Trader Joe's provides tiny cups.

So what's going on here? Are folks using the Bunn placing the cup under the protuberance, wrongly assuming that is the nozzle? Why are they not able to see the white dot and reticle, are they looking down on the machine from an angle that obscures them?

Beyond those questions, I'd ask you: 

1) If you were the designer of this machine who learned of this problem, what would you change in the next version? And 

2) If you were the manager of the store, saddled with these two machines, how would you solve the problem?

Matthias Wandel's DIY Automatic Baby-Rocking Machine

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Woodworking inventor Matthias Wandel is a newly-minted father, and we Wandel-watchers have been wondering when he'd incorporate the new baby into a project. Years, we figured, and we were wrong: He's already devised a DIY contraption to help soothe the baby come naptime.

Wandel pulled apart an old drill, pulled some belts out of an 8-track tape player and got to work. Check out his surprising (and surprisingly effective) creation:


No Bridge, No Problem: Drive Fast Enough and You Can Cross a River in a Car

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Years ago there was a hoax video showing people running across water. Their claim was that if you picked up enough speed in advance, you could pull a Jesus for a dozen steps or so. It turned out to be viral marketing and I'm glad I can't remember what the product or company was.

These guys in Iceland, however, are the real deal. They pick up enough speed in advance to make it across the surface of the water. However, they're not on foot; they're driving jeeps, off-road buggies, motorcycles and snowmobiles. Take a look at these maniacs:

It's true that the water's not super deep, but when you do it wrong you will sink, as we saw.

The Formula Off-Road Hydroplaning Competition is held in Hella, Iceland. Being an American east-coaster, I'd say it looks like "a lot of" fun. My west-coast counterparts might choose a different expression to put between the quotes.

And it's all for a good cause: These Icelandic Formula Off-Road events, as they're known, are fundraisers for Icelandic rescue teams. I think it's safe to say that if you get stuck out in the hinterlands, these are the guys you want coming for you.

DARPA is Funding a Project to Disable In-Flight Aircraft with Swarms of "Gremlins"

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Gremlins are mythical imps that destroy airplanes. During World War II, Royal Air Force pilots blamed the creatures for their frequent on-board mechanical woes. Author and RAF ace Roald Dahl later spun Gremlins into a successful children's book, painting them as 1940s eco-terrorists who sabotaged aircraft in retaliation for the airplane factory having destroyed their forest home. Gremlins were subsequently incorporated into Bugs Bunny cartoons that some of us grew up watching.

Fantastical as they are, Gremlins are pretty much the last thing we'd expect DARPA to create. But they reckon they've got the technology to, and on Friday they announced that they're actually trying.

Unsurprisingly, they're not funding a bunch of multicolored little men with hacksaws and hatchets. Instead they're taking the drone swarm approach. 

The idea is that a bomber deploys a group of unmanned aerial vehicles that locate nearby enemy fighters and swarm around them. As Defense One explains, 

Like a team of silver-suited circus performers, they encircle the jet in a precise and choreographed dance and begin a series of electromagnetic attacks, jamming the radar and the communications. The jet's instruments begin to behave strangely. The pilot takes aim but there are too many of them. He's been swarmed. As quickly as they appear, the drones are gone, vanished into the underbelly of a low-flying bomber that's now climbing away. With his communications and targeting equipment fried, the pilot must return to base. He's been effectively neutralized and the culprits are nowhere to be seen.

DARPA isn't funding the project because they love children's books and cartoons; Gremlins, which they're actually calling them, would potentially be a much more cost-effective solution to downing enemy planes. They'd certainly be cheaper to produce than conventional jet fighters, and unlike missiles they're re-usable. "We wouldn't be discarding the entire airframe, engine, avionics and payload with every mission, as is done with missiles, but we also wouldn't have to carry the maintainability and operational cost burdens of today's reusable systems, which are meant to stay in service for decades," DARPA program manager Dan Pratt explains.

At Mcity, The University of Michigan is Teaching Autonomous Cars to Drive

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"There are many challenges ahead as automated vehicles are increasingly deployed on real roadways," explains Peter Sweatman, director of the U-M Mobility Transformation Center. "Mcity is a safe, controlled and realistic environment where we are going to figure out how the incredible potential of connected and automated vehicles can be realized quickly, efficiently and safely." [Photo courtesy of University of Michigan]

Mcity in Ann Arbor, Michigan has all the makings of a small city—streets up to 5 lanes wide, cross-sections and stoplights, underpasses, buildings, vandalized signs, faded lane markings—all poised on a 32-acre site on the University of Michigan's campus. The elaborate mise en scène at Mcity is part of the newly formed Mobility Transformation Center, where researchers study and test the behavior of automated and connected cars.

The testing facilities at Mcity are the first of their kind, specifically designed to simulate the everyday bedlam of the streets—with all the built-in surprises that comprise life in the city. The mock-town is equipped with rearrangeable architecture, various types of road surfaces and everything from suburban streets to freeways, where the newest vehicle technologies are seen in action (and, most importantly, in reaction). Here, researchers push the limits of these systems by emulating the real experiences that drivers grapple with everyday, like blind corners and distracted pedestrians (Mcity's are robotic), as well as communications with other vehicles and GPS and traffic databases. 

The streets of Mcity are lined with silk-screened facades. [Photo courtesy of University of Michigan]
The miniature city includes a five-mile network of roads, complete with intersections, roundabouts, roadway markings, and traffic signs and signals. The $6.5 million site also boasts sidewalks, bus facilities, benches, simulated buildings, streetlights, parked cars, robotic pedestrians and obstacles like construction barriers. [Photo courtesy of University of Michigan]

U-M partnered with the Michigan Department of Transportation and several car companies to open the space this July in preparation for the impending arrival of driverless streets, which, they say, could be 10 to 15 years from now. That date may seem far away as many cars can already perform on autopilot with impressive results and Google cars are already commonly seen in Silicon Valley. But we're still far from a fully-automated road—and rushing to hand off the wheel entirely has already proven catastrophic. With a keen focus on automation, car companies today increasingly employ technologies to keep an eye on the driver—and make sure that the driver, in turn, is keeping an eye on the road. This makes Mcity all the more attractive to U-M commercial partners—companies like Ford, GM, Honda, Nissan, Toyota, State Farm, Verizon, and Xerox. 

A driver's instinct for reacting to surprises can only come from experience; translating that know-how into a vehicle's software is the crux of fully 'teaching' cars how to drive themselves. But if we succeed, that ability to drive could be lost to humans, as some experts warn, and we'll be left at the mercy of cars to handle emergencies. Scenarios like these beg consideration that the obstacles to a driverless future may not be only technical. In any case, Mcity and centers who follow in its footsteps will be key to understanding automation in the real world and making future cars compatible with unpredictable city streets.


Tonight at Curiosity Club: WTF Is Money?

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Tonight at the Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club we welcome Marcus Estes to make heads and tails of money. His presentation will begin with the historical origins of money as a representation of value, then take us on a jaunty walk through a modern theory of credit, debt, and... fractional reserve banking! Finally, we'll conclude with a look at the potential utopias and dystopias that may be arrive with the coming of a new age of crypto-currency.

6pm PST at Hand-Eye Supply and streaming on the Curiosity Club homepage.

Just after the financial crash of 2008, I gave a talk to a small audience about the true function of money in our modern capitalist economy. It's been 6 years, and we seem to be living in an entirely different world. The stock market has reached new heights and traditional economic indicators are relatively bright. But how different is our current environment to the conditions in 2007?

Marcus Estes is the co-founder and CEO of Chroma.fund, a Portland-based startup using the Bitcoin blockchain to build a local stock market. Previously he released the world's first podcast music license, helped launch the Free Music Archive, collaborated with nonprofits to build open source software systems for fundraising and volunteer management, and toured with Kanye West as a technical consultant.


Building A Rubber Band-Powered Race for the Ages

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Ready, set—snap! Earlier this month, Art Center College of Design hosted their annual Formula E competition (the 'E' is for elastic) where students, professionals—and anyone else crazy enough to participate—are invited to build and race rubber-band-powered toy cars. The main competition takes place on the art school's Pasadena campus, but has quickly spread to Beijing as teams from around the globe come together to showcase and test lightweight vehicles crafted from anything participants can get their hands on with materials ranging from titanium and carbon fiber to masonite and plywood.

The race got its start back in the 1980's when one of the industrial design teachers felt that his students should go through the rigorous process of making something functional—as opposed to building the foam and styrene models collecting dust. Looking to MIT professor Woodie Flowers for inspiration, the teacher devised a project where each student had to build a vehicle that could make it around the school—powered solely by a 16-foot rubber band. "I did not have the experience of being a student in the class, but I knew many people who had," says Andy Ogden, Chair of Art Center's Graduate Industrial Design Department. "They would constantly talk about his project, how much they learned and how fond of it they were. So, in 2005, when I became the chair of the program, I realized we needed to have some kind of project that really gave the students a chance to build something that had to work. We updated the rules of the game, came up with the idea for the current competition and we've been doing it ever since."

Ogden has seen a lot of changes over the past ten years as participants improve upon the innovations of preceding challengers. "Five years ago, the best cars were three wheel designs," Ogden recalls. "They were incredibly lightweight with skinny little tires, like a bicycle. This year, we're really seeing that they're turning into cars in a more realistic sense. They have four wheels and, instead of a brake, they're using a clutch. Instead of taking the sixteen feet of rubber band and making a twelve inch loop, they're turning it into a bundle that's about half that." Bundling the rubber band is an integral part of building a vehicle, as the shorter the loop is, the more torque it has. "They're getting an incredible amount of power out of the rubber band, but what they have to do is control how many rotations because they can't complete the course if it unwinds during the race," Ogden says. Inventiveness plays a large role in how the rubber band is held when wound up and then released. Sudden surges of power from uncontrolled releases have led to many cars meeting their destruction on the course, a consequence of lack of control.

The 16-foot rubber band is still an essential part of the race, but an updated list of official rules and constraints further dictates what participants can and cannot do. "Of course, designers are really creative, so the first thing they want to try is tying the rubber band to a stake in one place and then transporting the vehicle back like a big sling shot—and the answer is no," Ogden says. "You can't have anything attached to the vehicle outside and the rubber band has to power it." The official mandated rubber band dimensions are a 3/16-inch by 16-foot rubber strip, produced by FAI Tan Rubber or PeckPolymers. Vehicles must achieve forward motion solely by the energy stored within that rubber band, which can only be attached to one vehicle. Each vehicle must also be able to hold itself at the starting line, requiring some type of brake or clutch to control the car. "So those are the kinds of things that people typically will invent, and those you need to progress," Ogden says.

Teams have between 2 to 4 members, with one student being from a local city college to encourage more interdisciplinary collaboration beyond the school's borders. "Very often, those members end up being very important with the skills and intellectual talent they bring to the table," Ogden says. The most notable of all the rules specifically geared towards the race's designer constituency is 1.4 which reads: "The contest for measuring aesthetic and build quality achievement should precede all other (dynamic) contests."

"The rules don't really change much and that's an important thing because what we want to do is create something that really simulates the real marketplace," he says. "That's the way it is out there. What becomes really important is for the students to learn from all the previous examples that are available to study. Then it largely becomes an issue about being able to find new materials, new components, think about the problem in a different way, just a little bit better." Sourcing materials adds another real-world element to the competition, as participants who research and find access to better components have an advantage, similar to the real product marketplace.

The main race takes place at Art Center's Pasadena campus, wending its way through their Sculpture Garden for various courses such as the Sinclair Hill Climb, Ashtray Alley Drag, Sculpture Garden Flats and the Figure 8. "The main competitions take place simply on the sidewalks we have outside of the building at the college," Ogden says. "We just started racing on them and they have now become solidified as the official dimensions." When a few Chinese design and technology schools wanted a piece of the fun, however, they built their own track in Beijing to compete, modeling it after Art Center's garden sidewalks.

This year, Team Leadfinger, made up of two Art Center ID graduate students, Zach Schlossberg and Zach Buchman, and Pasadena City College student Atria Azarmi, took the gold, winning five races and securing 'Best of Show' for their design. The winning vehicle held its rubber band longitudinally and featured a titanium front axle, giving it extra resilience and strength, as well as a carbon fiber tube making up the main body of the car. Parts were connected by rapid-prototyped pieces reinforced with carbon fiber. "A lot of the students quickly learn the difference between rapid-prototyped components, which are so easy to make and very gratifying to design, but are basically Happy Meal toys," Ogden says. "They're models. They're not really meant to be put into use as structural pieces." Carbon fiber rods are used to add additional reinforcements or are printed in ways so that the grain increases their strength. Team Leadfinger scavenged eBay to track down a carbon fiber disc brake from a discontinued radio-controlled car to work as a clutch and control the power, while a modified toy helicopter tail rotor was used for the gear train drive. Various wheels and tires were taken and tested from other toys and models until a perfect weight and balance was achieved.

Most of us drive around in cars and have no idea what makes them work," Ogden says. "So this is a really steep learning curve. Throw everybody into the ocean and get them to swim to understand the geometry and the dynamics of how a very simple car works." One of the key learnings necessary to making a successful car is a differential, a gear mechanism that allows wheels to rotate at different speeds—what gives cars the ability to turn while still maintaining traction. Team Leadfinger invented their own for the race, using a very small one-blade bearing carefully placed inside modified hubs of a radio-controlled wheel. Geared nylon components from a toy helicopter were removed from their shafts and carefully attached. By doing this, the winning team was able to make a wheel that could stay on the axle and, at the same time, have a very lightweight limited-slip differential (LSD)—critical for a four wheel car. "Some of this stuff is very delicate circuitry and you have to break a number of parts to make it work," Ogden says. "They would take components off [other vehicles] and attach it to their own axle to find a way to pin it to the axle and they would make their own bearing so they could assemble their own transmission and differential."

"Part of what [Formula E] does is it creates this wonderful example for us to have a dialogue about how products go through these different phases," Ogden says. "At one point, it's all about a strategy or the overall big idea and then it reaches the phase where it's all going up. In the end, you are on stage so it has to work and if it doesn't, your sense of self and the relative success of your work is out there for everybody to see. We end up having lots of dialogue about how that translates into other kinds of products." Those interested in competing or partnering next year can find out more about the Formula E race here.

Images by Richshell A. Allen and Frank Yuan. Courtesy of Art Center.


UCLA's Trippy Augmented Reality Sandbox

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Sim City fascinates millions of players who are able to manipulate urban environments to their liking. UCLA has created a kind of nature-based alternative, and one that looks more satisfying in that the user physically manipulates an actual material, sand in a sandbox. An Xbox Kinect reads the shapes you create, then a computer and projector overlay graphics updated in real-time. Take a look at this thing:

To be clear, this Augmented Reality Sandbox is meant as an educational tool, not a videogame. UCLA's Modeling and Educational Demonstrations Laboratory in the Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences reckon they can use it for undergraduate science courses. But if they can mass-produce these, I think they'd have a potentially huge market for children—at least the children of parents who work in Silicon Valley. Would you rather your kid made mud-pies, or sculpted facsimiles of Napa Valley?

In addition to the cool "make it rain" feature, the DEPSS also claims the system allows one to create volcanoes that can erupt. What kid wouldn't want to pull that one off? And the bonus is you wouldn't need to clean up the baking soda afterwards.

Death Star Architect Speaks Out, Defends Design of Exhaust Port

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When you hear the term "starchitect" you think of a Gehry, a Graves, a Foster. But portmanteau aside, none of these men have ever designed anything that actually existed among the stars, in outer space. The gentleman in the video below, however, has.

This is the architect that won the commission to design the Death Star, the mobile battle station famously blown up in what was, depending on your politics, either a horrific tragedy or an act of victory. While any structure's HVAC systems are typically key points of infiltration—Jack Bauer and John McClane always seem to be crawling around in them—the design of the exhaust ports on the Death Star drew extra-intense scrutiny after the station was destroyed. Here, the man responsible finally sets the record straight:


Blazing Fast Rescue Action: Japanese Firefighter Tech Rope Speed Competition

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There's no country in the world that has lax firefighters, but in Japan, the prevalence of traditional wooden structures adds an element of increased urgency. And while some team members of a Japanese firefighting brigade are trying to put the fire out, other members have to climb and crawl into the burning structures to pull potentially unconscious victims out.

Rope plays a large role in Japanese rescue operations, and the amount of drilling they do with the stuff is evident in this "Japan Tech Rope Rescue Competition."  The speed with which these guys move is nothing short of insane. Enjoy, and apologies in advance for the soundtrack:

Screwpop's Well-Designed, Ultra Minimal Utility Knife

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The unfortunate thing I've learned in running a photography rental studio: People steal. If it isn't nailed down and can be concealed in a bag, eventually it will go missing, as have the following studio items of mine: Audio cables (for plugging an iPhone into the stereo), $20 rolls of gaffer's tape, handheld packaging tape dispensers, extra rolls of toilet paper in the bathroom (!), A-clamps, superclamps, J-hooks, and above all, utility knives. I've learned to lock all of this stuff away, but I often forget to put away the utility knife after I re-cut the seamless backdrops, and then it winds up in someone else's collection.

That's why I'm looking into one of these ScrewPop utility knives. Small enough to fit in a pocket attached to my keys, and as you'll see in this review, the design—updated after customer feedback—is quite clever:

For ten bucks and change, I figure I can't go wrong. But with my luck, I'll acquire one and then have my keys taken by a mugger.

DiResta's Cut: Vampire Spike Table

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Jimmy recently got his hands on a killer, and historical, piece of equipment: A vintage South Bend lathe. Manufactured in 1944, Jimmy's model was undoubtedly created for the war effort, as the famous South Bend Lathe Works served both the Bureau of Ordnance and the U.S. Navy; but here he's using it to produce something more in keeping with peacetime (unless your name is Dracula), his "Vampire Spike" table. Experiments with a tapering jig led to the following piece of furniture:

Japan Pulls Olympics Logo Under Accusations of Design Plagiarism

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When Japan released the design of their logo for the 2020 Olympics, it was widely derided as being unattractive. Now an even more serious allegation has been made: It's not just ugly, it's stolen.

That's the assertion made by Olivier Debie, a Belgian graphic designer whose 2011 logo for a performing arts theater seems too close for comfort. Let's look at them side-by-side:

Debie began lobbying the Japanese government shortly after the Olympics design was unveiled in July. He subsequently created the following gif, which was recirculated on social media and built a groundswell of support:

Debie's protest appeared to fall on deaf ears within Japan throughout August, with the Tokyo organizers insisting the design was original. Debie subsequently threatened legal action, and yesterday the Japanese government finally capitulated, canceling the design.

So what happened here? The man responsible for the Olympics logo, designer Kenjiro Sano, claimed that the work was wholly original and that he had never seen Debie's design. Opponents pointed out that this was the second time Sano has been in the news amidst accusations of design plagiarism, following an earlier campaign for beverage manufacturer Suntory:

Kenjiro Sano…said he failed to properly supervise his staff and conceded that they had "copied" the ideas of others in creating tote bags for Suntory's non-alcoholic beer campaign.

Reading between the lines, Sano supporters would say it's possible junior staff were responsible for the plagiarism; opponents would say that's no excuse. Supporters of both Debie and Sano held Twitter skirmishes, but following yesterday's announcement Yoichi Masuzoe, the Governor of Tokyo, made his position clear: "I want Mr. Sano to provide an explanation," said Masuzoe. "I feel like we have been betrayed." (For those unfamiliar with the nuances of Japanese diction, these statements represent fury.)

Apparently there is still some confusion about what will happen next. Belgian newspaper Deredactie indicates Debie will drop the lawsuit, but a headline in Japan's Kyodo News reads "Belgian designer not to drop suit despite Olympics logo withdrawal."

One thing is for certain: As Tokyo's Olympic organizers cast about for a replacement logo, the submitted designs will surely get a harder look.

Trend in Invisibility as Automotive Application Continues

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Like many of you, I always assumed the technology to render things invisible would be developed by the military, and would later trickle down to the civilian sector. Instead, surprisingly, it is civilian automakers who appear to be running with the invisibility ball.

Land Rover's CargoSense Master

By harnessing cameras and screens, Toyota rendered the rear half of a car transparent from the driver's perspective, and Jaguar did the same with the A-pillars. Both of those existed only in concept form, but Samsung went a step further and actually rendered tractor-trailers somewhat invisible by placing huge screens on the back linked to cameras in the front.

The latest to jump into the invisibility game is Jag's sister marque Land Rover and their CargoSense Master:

I know the bulk of the video involving the horses isn't exactly relatable--I think most of us simply ride our stallions to the next village rather than trucking them--but the see-through trailer portion, unlike the Toyota and Jaguar concepts linked to above, seems very do-able. 

I'm guessing it won't be long until we start seeing some market-ready options. And heck, Google may have already figured out how to make their self-driving cars invisible, but unfortunately from the outside; maybe that's why human drivers keep crashing into them.

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