Engineering to inspire

Future Mobility: Urban Design

What happened on UCreateChange.com (31 May-6 Jun 2010)

Can buildings move? Can they swagger, saunter or unfurl – even with people living inside them?

Can we carry our homes on our backs? Or have London Bridge roll out across the channel?

Maybe the future of buildings are simply higher, stronger and better…made with nanotechnology and embedded with sensors that warn of unusual stresses.

Perhaps we’ve to go north into the Arctic Circle to escape the crowds. How then should we keep warm in the North Pole? Or follow New Yorkers’ lead to build their city from trash by using automated robots that take trash sitting at a landfill and use it extend the city and reconstitute it.

And on sunny days break out Blob VB3: the Mobile Living Space – we’ll bring it from rice field to jungle to beach or designated parking lot.

So can buildings move? Can they swagger, saunter or unfurl – even with people living inside them?

Look around, dream a bit, and you might find Future Mobility in buildings.

Take the Create2011 engineering challenge and tell us your vision of Future Mobility to win the grand prize of: A Nokia Experiential Journey in Beijing and Singapore! Check out our Facebook fanpage for exciting contests & giveaways!

Art & Technology

What happened on UCreateChange.com (17-23 May 2010)

“Art imitates life; life imitates Art.”

The truthfulness of this palindrome is apparent now that technology has overlaid digital worlds upon our bricks-and-mortar realm.

For example, Augmented Reality lets us look through a mobile phone’s camera and see overlays (more in our Mobile apps for your life post). On the art front, the Japanese have create a live Twitter feed on an Augmented Reality building. By looking through your phone’s camera, you can see what its inhabitants are twittering about and shop advertisements.

That’s what we saw. But we heard…

…several German inventors modified a piano to speak text from the Proclamation of the European Environmental Criminal Court. This project was part of an art event in Palazzo Ducale (Venice). What they did was to map and match a child’s reading onto the piano scales to get this musical rendition of a very dry topic.

Sometimes art has purpose.

Like this project which aims to get people to use the stairs more. They turned a staircase into a piano that it tinkles whenever you step and riff on the keys. As the video shows, almost everyone used the staircase instead of the escalator. Now that’s success, ain’t it?

Why not sell art on E-bay?

That’s what Caleb Larsen’s art piece “A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter” does…automatically. The black block connects to the internet and asks for bids on E-bay. If there’s a successful bid, the block changes owners and re-bids itself after some time. The metaphysics are beyond us, but it’s a quirky way of using how art and technology can mesh and mingle.

Take the Create2011 engineering challenge and wow us with your vision of the Future. The Grand Prize: A Nokia Experiential Journey in Beijing and Singapore!

The Future of Mobility

What happened on UCreateChange.com (10-16 May 2010)

Mobility: “the quality of moving freely".

What we wanna do is to improve that quality. After all everything – from traffic to information – wants to be free. Just look at Wikipedia, it’s an encyclopedia of information created by people like you and me, and moderated by very interested parties…

And it’s also the theme of Create2011: our annual engineering challenge!

So every now and then, you’ll find things that might just define the future of mobility on our website; such as Bicycle lanes in the air that let you soar above traffic & cars… the peeps over at Habbo certainly liked them enough to give it props. What really weirded them out was this magnetic ink that turns any paper into nanomachines such as levers, tweezers and speakers to boom the bass!

The Light touch Pico Projector might just change how we interface with our computers and devices. It’s a light show that creates touchscreens out of any surface. Applications include: ordering Sushi by drawing on your table; playing (literally) off the wall piano.

And the newspaper industry should get booster shot with this portable E-Reader that folds, rolls and yes, displays the news like traditional newspapers, but only as it happens. Finally we heart this invention where cars are steered by the driver’s eyes. So remember to keep them on the road at all times!

Take the Create2011 engineering challenge and wow us with your vision of the Future. The Grand Prize: A Nokia Experiential Journey in Beijing and Singapore!

For the Love of Humanity

What happened on UCreateChange.com (3-9 May 2010)

We were going through our UCreateChange Fanpage last week. And we were particularly struck by this comment: “It's so good to know there is an Engineer group, other than Doctors without Borders.” on our wall.

Why women engineers rock…

What happened on UCreateChange.com (19-25 Apr 2010)

Women are as inventive as men.

The Spelbots is a great example. The all-woman engineering team built robots to play soccer. The efforts of these girls paid off as they came in second at the RoboCup 2009 (Osaka). That achievement’s nothing to be sneezed at.

In fact they’ve torn apart notions that engineering is a “guy” thing. Naturally there are differences. When guys compete to showcase their ideas, women tend to be more accepting.

According to their mentor professor Andrew Williams, “There tends to be more of a social side [to it]…Teamwork basically. There’s an emphasis on collaboration, creativity, social aspects of computer science.”

In fact the social part of engineering (or related disciplines) is important for women engineers.

Climate Change: what saves us

What happened on UCreateChange.com (12-18 Apr 2010)

The TV tells us that climate change is bad. It’s true. Sadly, most of us might know it but we won’t feel it.

That’s frightening because it’ll amount to just lip service on our part – all talk, no action. And climate change is getting worse… just step outside, ain’t it hot? Eventually, we’d live on our own wastes and making homes in wastelands.

Thankfully we’ve got a small group of people who are doing something about it.

Like these architects who turn their buildings into eco-friendly paradises. Or hydrogels that might just replace plastics. Or a safer way to dispose of Evian water bottles with hungry fungus.

These Indonesian students took the cake. They might have just solved Indonesia’s landfill problem by inventing a method that uses oranges to dissolve styrofoam. That’s Nobel prize worthy!

And if you’ve a unwanted phone. Why not recycle it into gold?

This is just the tip of the iceberg (or what’s left of them in the Artic circle), there are many more inventions that can save our world. And if technology got us here, perhaps it’s technology that will get us out of this mess.

If you know of any save-the-world type inventions, tell us about it in the comments!

Engineering a Superman

What happened on UCreateChange.com (5-11 Apr 2010)

If you were following last week’s postings on UCreateChange.com, then you’ll notice that it’s all about how technology changes us, humans. That got us thinking about making a superman from last week’s posts.

With all due respect to Dr Manhattan from The Watchmen, here’s we’ll make our superman.

Sorry, I couldn’t figure out how to create an image map on this blog. So I thought I’d just splash up this image and put up the links below:

Comments welcome as usual.

Emotive Mobility in cars (and other things)…

What happened on UCreateChange.com (29 Mar-4 Apr 2010)

At the Singapore Design Conference 2009, Chris Bangle spoke about his car designs (TED talk here). We loved his vision of the future in “emotive mobility” where people use transportation however they want to satisfy them.

If you think about it, Bangle’s emotive mobility doesn’t just apply to cars.

It could easily be a wearable motorcycle that straps on like an Aliens exoskeleton or strolling houses that cater to wanderlusty and treehugger types or even a new way of living out of your car (aka Quno).

We think that Alexander Kendrick’s subterranean texting device beats them all down. The low-frequency radio lets you SMS while underground. The emotive aspect?

How about: "Save Our Souls?" aka SOS!

“e” Awards: Homemade ain’t bad at all

What happened on UCreateChange.com (22-28 Mar 2010)

Think soups: steaming, hearty and good for you. The best ones are purportedly homemade and made from the heart.

The same goes for inventions. The good ones are created by people who see a need and fix it, regardless of opposition. That’s why we heart these inventors and their inventions… after all they do (or might) change the world that we live in.

Leonardo da Vinci's flying machine

So we’re rating last week’s posts with to on merit and potential. Let us know what you think about it in the comments.

My to do list…

What happened on UCreateChange.com (15-22 Mar 2010)

Things to do (don’t forget, E!):

Buy LEDS for The Bedazzler – the Handheld LED-Incapacitator
Swipe plastic bags for my candle-powered hot air balloon. Don’t forget the candles!
Finish a Tabasco sauce bottle. Spicy. But my friend’s faces when the bottle disappears in water. Priceless!
Borrow the Batmobile for a spin.
Get Killer Gerbil to doodle on my chalkboard table
Scrunge ice cream sticks for stick bombs!
Change the world…. Hrmmph… need help on this one. Got ideas? Email me please.

Things we’d love to see at the IT Show

What happened on UCreateChange.com (8-14 Mar 2010)

To anyone from the IT Show,

We, the general public of UCreateChange.com, sincerely request that the organisers overhaul the show. In fact, you’re missing out on so much cool stuff out there that we’re utterly shocked into silence.

[silence]

We respectfully submit our list of missing things to you for your perusal. And sincerely hope that you would consider revamping next year’s IT Show to fit our vision for the future.

Thank you for your time.

First up…

Think fast! Sports (part deux)

What happened on UCreateChange.com (1-7 Mar 2010)

Last week, we talked about how sports could be improved by science and technology on UCreateChange.com. Now we’re collating everything into this weekly digest.

Kudos to Australian Ben Kersten who won the OCBC Cycling Challenge held over the weekend (6-7 Mar). In grueling endurance sports, it really boils down to your training regime. Andy Potts, the top triathlete in USA uses his heart rate to gauge how much he should train. The results were spectacular: in just five years, he went from overweight weekend swimmer to a top-class professional athlete.

Winning is everything. That’s why athletes look every little edge that could beat down the competition. Some of them turn to modified sports equipment, while others down sports drinks to keep on going like the Energizer Bunny.

Finally, this is a smart use of a sporting equipment: S0ocket is a soccer ball that generates energy for off-grid rural areas. So kids kick it around to charge an embedded battery and use it later at night to power their lights.

Asian Inventions

What happened on UCreateChange.com (22-28 Feb 2010)

The Japanese and Koreans are technology whizzes. After all the world’s best electronics come from that part of Asia. The latest news has them turning tech into art, like the OLED screens that double up as art pieces from Nanobrick. Or they’re keeping it beautifully functional like the Zero emission house in Japan that’s built with ecologically friendly materials and uses the latest technology to generate and monitor energy use.

Closer to home, did you know that Singaporeans invented many things that we use today?

The PC sound card that turns beeps and bleeps into voices and music comes courtesy of Creative Technologies Sim Wong Hoo (crica 1989). Or the ubiquitous Thumb Drive by Trek Technologies that everyone carries photos, articles and videos in. Now some of them have even become as collectible as Be@rBricks! More recently there are the X-mini capsule speakers that use vacuum to mimic sub-woofers. Odd, I thought sound couldn’t travel in a vacuum?

Can’t get enough of Asian inventions?

Here are 50 of the best Asian inventions that have made an impact throughout the centuries. Apparently Asians have domesticated animals, cultivated crops, and created the toothbrush way before anyone else!

Power up! Alternative sources of power

16-28 Feb 2010

Power = energy / time.

Energy converts over time to give us power. Question is: how much time do we have left before we run out of energy?

Perhaps that’s why radical ideas are floating around on the internet such as hamster-powered electronics where nanogenerators harvest biomechanical energy released from small, irregular and erratic movements… expect hamster sweatshops in dingy corners soon. For power on the go, bounce a Piezoelectric backpack to charge your Motorola Razr cell phone.

Cars are the worst consumers of fossil fuels. In response a couple students invented a water-fueled internal combustion engine for scooters to run on water. We hope that it’ll eventually graduate to water-powered cars. And mind you, don’t smoke away the next big biofuel… as scientists discovered that tweaking genes of a Tobacco plant can increase oil production by 20 times. How’s that for maxing out our fuel production?

On the grander scale of things, our trash can power a country if we can get plasma plants in Pulau Semaku. And someone’s making a fusion reactor to provide limitless energy at minimal cost to the environment. Now that’s the wet dream of all green physicists.

Got an idea that would power up our lives? Leave it in the comments.

Biomimetic engineering: Nature inspires innovations

9-15 Feb 2010

From catching water to moving effortlessly and creating food from unusual sources (e.g. sunlight), nature’s organisms had centuries to get it right.

And we’re better off mimicking them in our designs of everyday and not-so-everyday things.

Take plants for example. Every school kid knows that they produce energy by photosynthesis, and make the air breathable for us (carbon dioxide in, oxygen out).

So engineers took their lead from plants, resulting in a solar cell that’s twice as efficient than other cells and concrete blocks that breathe carbon dioxide from the air!

We’d expect every living thing to host bacteria colonies. But there’s none on the Galapagos sharks. That’s due to their unusual skin patterns that prevent bacteria from landing on it. This discovery led to anti-bacterial surfaces used in hospitals.

The Humpback Whale’s jumps through the air are likened as a ballet. That inspired aerodynamic windmills based on their unusual fins. Back on land, the Nambian fog-basking beetle has taught architects how to design buildings that collect and collate water from its surroundings. The ant colony is greater than the sum of its ants. In fact it self-regulates its resources without the need for a central controller. Regen’s smart energy grid took a cue from the ants and allowed every electrical appliance to monitor and adjust their own energy usage based on what’s happening as a whole.

But the kicker is how we’ve design a way to self-assemble solar cells by mimicking salad dressing. Imagine it… salad dressing inspires?!

Janine Benyus on Biomimicry (src: TED)

I believe I can fly: On flight and flying machines

1-8 Feb 2010

Lemme ask you a question: “Have you wanted to fly?”

If not, then you’re missing out on the greatest of all human inventions – our ability to fly. Admittedly we fly seated instead of flapping our arms like birds, but it’s certainly better than being landbound… and as a pilot friend of mine once said: “Once you’re up there, you’ll never want to come back down.”

But we might soon find our wings clipped if we don’t figure out how to reduce the ecological cost of flying (and all things locomotive). That’s why we heart this electric plane that allows us to fly from Singapore to KL in a single bound and on $2 too! And in a fit of natural inspiration, they’ve took a leaf out of a tree and modelled a single-wing airplane after it. Apparently it flies pretty ok. If you want it to go down.

But flight isn’t just confined to airplanes. It goes down into the seas with this personal submarine that’s modeled after airplanes and uses aerodynamic principles to float, dive and glide through the seas. And the Russians once tried to cross-breed a tank with a plane with surprising results.

Here’s a weird application where we can levitate things with sound. Originally intended as a way to clean moon and mars vehicles, Acoustic levitation might just be the boost that concerts need to outflank each other.

Finally, we’ve posted up photos of the Singapore Airshow 2010 on our Facebook Fanpage. Y’know… just in case you didn’t make it out to middle-of-nowhere Changi Exhibition Centre.

Click on any photo to see our entire gallery! (Takes you away from this blog)

Good vibrations: Concerts galore!

25-31 Jan 2010

What a month of concerts!

We had Green Day, Boys Like Girls, and A*Mei. And this week is all Muse at the Big Night Out. And they all sounded great! That’s why we paid tribute to Sound engineers last week. These hidden talents are responsible for syncing up the band’s sounds – from drummer to guitarist to Martin.

That’s no mean feat so give ‘em respect. Check out Tom Butcher’s blog on how music, software and electronics could come together (thanks for the tip, fourwallsofsound!).

Especially in other areas where they come up with new musical experiences such as the voice-controlled toy piano where the piano tinkles to your singing, or The Audiopad – a brand new console that mixes music with a flick and twist of bottle caps.

Early adopters will want these oh-so-cutting edge audio gadgets to stay ahead of the musical scene. Alternatively get decked out with The Dancepants Kinetic Music Player where music is powered by your running feet via your pants.

I’ve always wondered – what if Boys Like Girls had the Boom Bench for their concert? Now that would seriously rock the house down.

The Great Escape by Boys Like Girls at Resorts World Singapore (src: 9421700)

Last week in UCreateChange: Films & entertainment

18-24 Jan 2010

The Avatar and 3D entertainment craze certainly swept us into the world of red and blue and fuzzy lines that made images pop out from the screen.

And home film buffs can now do it to the tune of $21,000. Panasonic’s 3D camcorder is the first to combine 3D lenses into one easy to carry unit. We say wait a bit, it’ll get smaller, faster, and cheaper.

Last week in UCreateChange: Food & music

11-17 Jan 2010

Mobile farming in New York City “What if we run out of food?”

That’s what a pair of New York City farmers (isn’t that an oxymoron?) hopes to raise awareness of with their farms on trucks, outfitted with “root barriers, erosion blankets, drainage mats and cups that are reserved for green roofs”, that canvass the streets of New York. On the other hand, if you like your vegetables less travelled, then live next to an urban underground farm in Tokyo.

UCreateChange roundup: Cybernetics

4-10 Jan 2010

Think “yellow elephants with polka dots and white bananas”.

And it’ll be picked up by a tiny brain electrode and turned into speech on your laptop. Not for mass consumption but perfect for folk who can’t speak on their own.

Talking about thoughts...Christian Kandlbauer’s new robot arms respond to his commands wired to his chest from his mind. And they’re agile enough to help him pass his driving test! And if he needs directions, just use SixthSense, a wearable gestural interface developed by MIT researchers, to find out where he’s at by beaming (yes, we’re not joking) a light onto a street sign and getting digital information from it.