Getting space-saving furniture right: Resource Furniture Posted by hipstomp / Rain Noe | 20 May 2010 These days people bandy the term "space-saving" about in hopes it will make their product more attractive to us city dwellers, particularly since there are now more of us than there are rural dwellers. But much of the supposedly space-saving furniture I've seen merely transforms from one thing to another, often in a very clumsy way; to me those objects do two things poorly rather than one thing well, and their novelty outweighs their functionality. One company I've found that truly "gets" space-saving is New-York-based Resource Furniture, which distributes Italian brand Clei and other European furniture manufacturers. As seen above, Ron Barth, President of Resource Furniture (along with Trade Account Manager Challie Stillman) took some time out to give Core77 a personal showroom demo.
Urbee: The world's first 'printed' car rolling off the 3D printing presses... By Daniel Bates Updated: 21:54 GMT, 23 September 2011 The world’s first 'printed' car has finally rolled off the printing press. The 'Urbee' was made using a special printer which built up layer upon layer of bodywork - almost as if the car was 'painted' into existence, except using layers of ultra-thin composite that are slowly 'fused' into a solid. But unlike most 'innovations' in cars, this one won't break down after 5 years - Urbee is built to last 30. Project leader Jim Kor, told MailOnline today: 'For us, this unveiling was quite a milestone. Built to last: The highly-durable material used in 'additive layer manufacturing' is said to last for 30 years Underneath is a petrol and electric hybrid engine which helps make it one of the greenest cars in the world. Experts have said the car uses eight times less energy than a similar vehicle and can go can go 200mpg on the motorway. Kor says, 'We are a small group of designers and engineers in Winnipeg trying to make a difference.
Package Tracker Replacement: None. We're no longer building this board but check out our GPS evaluation boards and maybe you can get started on cooking one up yourself! This page is for reference only. Description: Ever wondered how the shipping companies treat your packages en route to the destination? Assembled PCB only - product does not include media, GPS unit, battery, or enclosure. Turn the Package Tracker on and the default firmware logs the date/time, GPS coordinates, temperature, pressure, humidity, acceleration and battery level once a second for later evaluation. The Package Tracker can use up to 2GB of flash (not compatible with high capacity SD cards). 1GB has the capacity for weeks of continuous logging. The board comes with a JST connector to be powered from our line-up of LiPo batteries or other power sources up to 7.5VDC. By cleverly using the sleep mode of the LPC2148 we were able to get the power consumption relatively low. Features: Dimensions: Documents:
Aldebaran's New Nao Robot Demo At the IEEE Humanoids conference early this month, I met the new Nao. The latest version of the popular humanoid robot, created by Paris-based Aldebaran Robotics, has a more robust body, longer arms, a more advanced motion engine, and a new head with improved temperature control, Wi-Fi communications, and audio input and output. In terms of software, Aldebaran improved whole body motion controls, voice recognition, sound localization, and face and image recognition (Nao can learn to identify objects like photographs and book covers). And the robot has now a "fall manager," which detects a fall is going to happen and positions the arms and legs in a more protective posture. To see a demo, I met with Aldebaran founder and CEO Bruno Maisonnier, who it turns out is a big geek. Nao was the first robot the company created. Next year, Aldebaran plans to unveil Romeo, an adult-size humanoid designed to help elderly and disabled people with everyday tasks. Maisonnier loves to show off the Nao.
Alternative Energy A Car that Runs 200 Miles on Compressed Air Home | About Us | Contact | Subscribe A Car that Runs 200 Miles on Compressed Air The Industry-shattering work of Guy Negre The Future Fuel is Air Imagine: It costs nothing to fill up your car with gas. All engines work with compressed air, but Guy Negre's work involves pressuring the air first, prior to it hitting the piston. For more Alternative Energy videos, click here See the complete catalog offorbidden knowledge tv videos About Us | Privacy Policy | Contact Meet the New World's Fastest Micromouse Robot One year ago, we got super excited when a micromouse managed to negotiate a maze in under five seconds. At the 2011 All Japan Micromouse Robot Competition in Tsukuba, the micromouse pictured above shaved an entire second off of that time, completing the maze in a scant 3.921 seconds. That's fast. This robot, called Min7.1, was designed by Ng Beng Kiat. It has a top speed of just over 12 kph, which is wicked quick for something that's 10 cm long and weighs only 90 grams. If we continue the trend, next year we'll have a three second robot, followed by a two second robot, and by 2016 or so, robots will be blowing through mazes before we even ask them to. [ Ng Beng Kiat ] via [ Robots Dreams ]
WIRED Business Conference: Inventing Sucks Bio Shoshana Berger A recent addition to WIRED’s editorial team, Shoshana Berger led the launch of the new WIRED Design blog. She previously worked as an editorial consultant, was the founding editor in chief of ReadyMade magazine, and has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times Magazine, Travel + Leisure, California Home & Design, Business 2.0, Spin, and Popular Science. James Dyson A graduate of London's Royal College of Art, James Dyson was drawn to engineering principles from an early age. To download this program become a Front Row member. ZOOM IN: Learn more with related books and additional materials. For related Britannica content, please search on Britannica's Web site, at www.britannica.com. Logic signal voltage levels : LOGIC GATES Logic gate circuits are designed to input and output only two types of signals: "high" (1) and "low" (0), as represented by a variable voltage: full power supply voltage for a "high" state and zero voltage for a "low" state. In a perfect world, all logic circuit signals would exist at these extreme voltage limits, and never deviate from them (i.e., less than full voltage for a "high," or more than zero voltage for a "low"). However, in reality, logic signal voltage levels rarely attain these perfect limits due to stray voltage drops in the transistor circuitry, and so we must understand the signal level limitations of gate circuits as they try to interpret signal voltages lying somewhere between full supply voltage and zero. TTL gates operate on a nominal power supply voltage of 5 volts, +/- 0.25 volts. If a voltage signal ranging between 0.8 volts and 2 volts were to be sent into the input of a TTL gate, there would be no certain response from the gate. Related Links
Robot Car Intersections Are Terrifyingly Efficient Last time we put our life in the hands of a robot car, it managed to park itself without crashing or abducting us. Robot cars also know how to drive like maniacs, and even how to powerslide. These are all very neat tricks -- tricks that might save your life one day. But what's going to happen when all cars are this talented? Efficiency. Scary, scary efficiency. It's not just the sensor-driven skills that will soon be common to individual cars that will shape the future of automotive transportation, but also the ability for cars to communicate with each other, sharing constant updates about exactly where they are and where they're going. Seriously, just watching this simulation (which comes from Peter Stone, a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin) makes me more than a little nervous. So, how close are we to something like this? Via [ The Atlantic ]