April 14, 2006

The Visionaire Issue 45 Blue

Visionaire has teamed up with Kidrobot to produce Issue 45 of their already highly collectible magazine. Kidrobot x Visionaire 45 is 10 original toys customized by 10 fashion designers.

Contributing designers for the Blue Set include: Giorgio Armani, John Galliano, Stefano Pilati for Yves Saint Laurent, Helmut Lang, and Jean Paul Gaultier.

The Visionaire Issue 45 Blue

April 13, 2006

ultralight autonomous aircraft

An ultralight autonomous aircraft that mimics the navigational abilities of a fly could one day become a real fly on the wall reports discovery channel.

The 10-gram microflyer, being developed by a team of researchers lead by Dario Floreano at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, has a 36-centimeter (14-inch) wingspan.

But it could one day be shrunk to insect size and used for search and rescue.

"A lot of groups are taking inspiration from insects but none of them have been able to reach that with an indoor flying system," said research scientist and project leader, Jean-Christophe Zufferey.

Autonomous indoor flight presents scientists with particular technological challenges that nature has already overcome.

"Indoor environments are really tough," said Erik Steltz, a PhD candidate in electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. "There are so many things to bang off of I believe this is the best approach out there to do indoor guidance for aircraft."

April 3, 2006

HAL goes to work

A Japanese quadriplegic plans to ascend the peak of a Swiss mountain by riding piggyback on a mountaineer who will get some extra muscle from a robot suit, called HAL.

HAL, which stands for “hybrid assistive limb,” is a kind of wearable robot or motorised exoskeleton. Tsukuba University engineering professor Yoshiyuki Sankai developed HAL to help its operator perform tasks a normal human would not be strong enough to perform otherwise, according to the web page of Sankai’s venture company Cyberdyne.

Seiji Uchida, 43, will take a cable car to get within striking distance of the Breithorn mountain’s summit before attempting the day-long trek this August, said Shinichiro Saigo, business manager of the With Dreams organisation that Uchida founded to support the expedition.

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