20+ Years of Design, Technology & More
20+ Years of Design, Technology & More
You could engineer a better world? Autodesk’s own Dawn Danby and the independent creative genius Saul Griffith produced a video to inspire young people, teachers, designers, makers and others to dream of all the challenges and things you could do.
Singularity University just posted a YouTube link of a recent interview of world renowned paleontologist, and friend Louise Leakey of the Turkana Basin Institute. The interview was by Singularity University faculty chair member and fellow Autodesk employee Jonathan Knowles.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a rocket motor test here in Utah. The test was conducted by ATK and ULA United Launch Alliance. It was amazing event to see the motor prior to firing then the actual ignition from less than a mile away from the ignition site. The first sensation is the bright light from the flame, then the loud sound shaking your body, and about 3 seconds later then some heat. The solid fuel rocket engine burned about 90 seconds.
I will have a front row seat in the media area when ATK performs a ground test of GEM 60 solid rocket motor on September 6th, 2012. Last time I was at this test site, I had front row for the ARES DM1 fixed motor test and see the amazing engineering before and after firing as well as speak with the real rocket scientists and engineers. It was so amazing that I couldn’t event remember how to use my camera for a few seconds when the DM1 lit up and rumbled the earth.
How does Autodesk fit into this blog post, read further. The nature magazine is no ordinary magazine, it is more of a science periodical of peer reviewed papers and information on major discoveries in science. My good friend Dr. Louise Leakey and her 3 generations of family as paleoanthropologist’s, the Leakey’s have a new paper published in the August 2012 issue of nature that identifies a new species of our distant relatives that could change the way we look at evolution of we humans (homo sapiens) and multiple species that came before us. The find was located in the region I recently visited with Dr. Louise Leakey, Deming Yang of the National Museums of Kenya, and my colleague at Autodesk Gonzalo Martinez in Northern Kenya’s harsh and hot desert environment.
Perhaps you’re a gardener and have seen these evil little butterflies (Cabbage Moth / Cabbage Butterfly Plutella xylostella, Pieris rapae) that lay eggs on cabbage, then the caterpillars devour your vegetables. Why is it this is the only butterfly that I don’t like and does bad things? It is referred to as both a moth and butterfly so I will assume it is more annoying moth than a delicate innocent beautiful butterfly. It turns out these little delicate insects are highly territorial and wont go into a garden area where another is.
Old remedies were to spray tons of chemicals all over everything, spread egg shells in your garden, or place white paper butterfly decoys - but now we have 3D printing.
So I designed a 3D cabbage butterfly in AutoCAD end used STLOUT or 3DPRINT command to generate a STL file for use by 3D printers. I could also have easily designed the 3D Butterfly and generated an STL 3D Print export using the free 123D solid modeling software. I then printed it on my MakerBot Replicator and then affixed it with fishing line to some 1/8” copper wire.
In this months June 2012 Smithsonian Magazine there is a great article involving Reality Capture by Smithsonian curator Nicholas D. Pyenson Curator of Fossil Marine Mammals where you capture an existing object in a digital form such as a 3D mesh or point cloud. The article is “Save the Whale Bones – Laser scans record fossils” on page 84 of this issue and online at How Two Laser Cowboys-Saved The Day “http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/How-Two-Laser-Cowboys-Saved-The-Day.html”. The article details a unique archeological dig in Chile that was a collection of ancient whales located in the desert where a highway was going to be constructed, so time was of the essence to preserve this scientific anomaly of a group of full whale fossils in a land location
Last month myself and Gonzales Martinez spent a few weeks in Kenya with Dr, Louise Leakey of the Turkana Basin Institute and Yang Deming of the National Museum of Kenya. We were researching several aspects of aerial photography and from a remote controlled copter to not only capture video and photos by map and locate areas of interest for fossil artifacts. We were in the Northern most part of Kenya in the Lake Turkana basin where the earliest evidence of man has been discovered over the years including several skulls dating back millions of years. Gonzalo has taken some of our video from both my camera and the onboard Octo-Copter video as well as photos and posted the video for everyone to enjoy.
For US readers; please tune in for Bones of Turkana on PBS May 16th, 2012. This is a new documentary about the Leakey's human origins research in Kenya's Turkana Basin: http://t.co/si59ckRu
This past Thursday, Friday, and Saturday several high school student teams from around the Western United States converged on Salt Lake City and competed in the Utah's FIRST Robotics Competition regional competition.
Each team started designing in January for the Rebound Rumble challenge which involved several challenges where the robots must autonomously make some basketball baskets shots and then the wireless controlled manual portion gathering the balls and shooting them for points as well as some obstacles and cooperation challenges where one robot helps another over an obstacle. In between the events there is fun trivia and entertainment like music and dancing to keep the crowds energy going.