Windswept by Charles Sowers

Windswept by Charles Sowers from Dezeen on Vimeo.

Kinetic Art / Interactive Art

吉米哥捎來的藝術訊息，一座隨風旋轉活動的紋理藝術。
藝術家：

http://charlessowers.com/

http://tinkering.exploratorium.edu/charles-sowers/

Magnetic Labyrinth from Charles Sowers

Magnetic Labyrinth from Charles Sowers on Vimeo.

marvelous setting for choreographing dynamic patterns!!

HygroScope

HygroScope - Centre Pompidou Paris from ICD on Vimeo.

隨著濕度變化而改變型態的裝置。

Rachel Armstrong: Architecture that repairs itself?

[新書預告]仿生微生系 運作中

這是正醞釀中的新書 仿生微生系。

距離活潑建築出版也差不多四年有了，期間繼續發展自己的理論架構，一方面應用在設計教學的實驗上，很興奮也近關情怯，趕稿中，加油！

自我建構 self-assembly

flowing rain trace as an adjustable formation

i took a bus the other day. it was raining and freezing in taipei. i looked outside through the window to see the cityscape. to some degree, a bus window is an excellent observing tool to experience the city life and culture. due to the rain fall and the uneven bus roof, so there came a continuing little "river" flowing vertically passing on the window surface. i am so attractive to this tiny urban spectacle, more charming than the taipei 101 fire work at the new year eve, that i was suddenly isolated from the other city events and focused on the changeable water trace i was witnessing. what is more graceful and astonishing is the story the rain and bus scriped together, sharing the same key structure to the generation of animated forms, vivid forms, or the forms with life. from an embryo in a womb to the landscape of earth, from the baking bread in the oven to the rushing stream of the boiled water demostrates the process of form making and its moveable nature in form. i have to say it is a tiny opening ocasionally happening in daily life, but also a deep insight that sees through the apprearance of the enormous structure that functions steadily in the universe.

【轉貼】Google研發自動駕駛車 反應比人靈敏 ； Google tests cars that drive themselves

The cars have done thousands of miles, Google says


Nobody spotted the Google car crossing the Golden Gate Bridge


【聯合報╱編譯組／綜合報導】 2010.10.11 04:27 am


網路巨擘Google最近在加州對他們研發的自動駕駛車進行試車，它以豐田的Prius油電車改裝而成，駕駛座有人，但不開車，車頂的漏斗狀圓筒，也是汽車的「眼睛」十分吸睛，不過，Google擅自在加州進行自動駕駛試車，更讓道路安全專家側目，當局正調查是否違法。

Google正祕密研發自動駕駛汽車，它利用人工智慧軟體感應汽車的周遭環境，再模仿人類，作出一連串的駕駛決定。Google有七輛車同時試車。每車的駕駛座有一人，於車子出差錯時隨時接手，後座有一技師，負責監控導航系統。根據紀錄，自動汽車可完全無人為干預狀況下行駛一千六百公里，測試過程總行駛里程已超過二十三萬公里，僅偶爾須人為介入。

七部原型車目前僅有一次車禍紀錄，而且並非自動車本身的問題，而是停在紅綠燈前被後面的車輛追撞。

工程師表示，自動駕駛系統反應比人類靈敏，擁有三百六十度全方位感應，且不受分心、打瞌睡或酒精、藥物影響，自動駕駛汽車一旦上路，工程師相信，車禍死亡人數可望減半。

Google堅稱他們上路前，已問過律師，並無違法問題，且Google的自動駕駛汽車不會危及其他駕駛。該公司強調，研發自動駕駛汽車即是為減少車禍發生，且他們試車時，均有人在車上。


Engineers at Google have tested a self-driving car on the streets of California, the company has announced.

The cars use video cameras mounted on the roof, radar sensors and a laser range finder to "see" other traffic, software engineer Sebastian Thrun said.

They remain manned at all times by a trained driver ready to take control as well as by a software expert.

Google hopes the cars can eventually help reduce road traffic and cut the number of accidents.

In a posting on the company's official blog, Mr Thrun said the self-driven cars had so far covered 140,000 miles on the road.

They have crossed San Francisco's iconic Golden Gate bridge, negotiated the city's famous sloping streets, driven between Google offices, and made it around Lake Tahoe in one piece.


'Exciting future'

Engineers told the New York Times that the forays onto the highways have been largely incident-free, apart from one bump when the car was reportedly hit from behind at a traffic light.

In his Google blog post, Mr Thrun - professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford University - insisted that safety was the "first priority" in the project.

Routes are pre-planned, mapped first by real drivers, and local police are briefed in advance, he says.

But he pointed to figures from the World Health Organization which show that more than 1.2 million people are killed each year on the roads, and said that number could and should be reduced.

"We believe our technology has the potential to cut that number, perhaps by as much as half.


"While this project is very much in the experimental stage, it provides a glimpse of what transportation might look like in the future thanks to advanced computer science. And that future is very exciting," he added.

Google has rapidly branched out from its previous core business of search in recent years.

The company already has significant interests in location services through its Google Maps and Google Street View offerings.

LED triggered by LDR

The setting for the LDR exercise is the same as the button exercise except that the button is replaced by LDR(light dependent resistor) which leads to the environment light brightness as the factor controlling the LED's on/off. It is a simple interesting sensor-based electrical circuit.

The 2nd exercise is modified based on the previous one, but the output pin is shifted to the PWM which conveys not only the yes or no value but also how much the value is and what quality the value effects the environment condition.

button to control LED's ON/OFF & its brightness

After resting 4 2 weeks, i am back on my arduino journey. the new practice is about how to use button to control a LED's on/off and its brightness.

LED on/off is shown before, however, the interesting thing is setting the brightness by using the same button with PWM(pulse width modulation) concept. PWM is preset in arduino already. it is arrangement of the proportion of on and off to modulate the desired condition for brightness of LED or speed of motors etc.

it is a little exercise from chapter 5 in "getting started with arduino".

wiimode玩樂器

wiimode控制 + 音樂素養 = 機械人樂團

機械人幫你畫人像

辨識系統轉化成輸出設備！

就是愛動

前陣子看過使用iphone駕駛汽車，今天無意間在網上看到iphone與直昇機(鸚鵡)結合。還有前些時候mit medialab有位印度研究生發展的sixth sense將數位化的世界與現實世界融合一起，都讓人很興奮！

「讓建築動起來！」已經不能只是口號。let's go 4 it.

Golan Levin's artwork

interstitial fragment processor



scrapple installation



TED lecture



在TED上看到Golan Levin的作品，覺得相當有趣。他的互動作品具備了收集即時資訊、處理、表現，同時也帶著幽默。

【from youtube】 Surface Computing: Microsoft PlayTogether Demo

"playtogether" system 可以讓分隔兩地的影像立刻呈現在彼此之間，透過影像疊合可以產生類似真實下西洋棋的場景，或者是遙遠的兩方實際在紙上塗鴉(這讓我想起Raoul的Scenario Game, 似乎可以完的更瘋狂)，更有趣的是影片尾端的示範，透過實際場景的投射，回饋到電腦內運算進而創造虛擬的運動軌跡，而且是即時的喔！

【轉貼】Carcade概念可讓你透過車窗外景色玩遊戲

from Kun Wang, Autoblog

相信不少讀者朋友小時候都有跟著家人坐車長途旅行的經驗，但大部份在後座的時間，除了盯著窗外發呆、聽聽廣播/音樂、跟兄弟姊妹打亂...之外（其實可以做的事情好像還不少XD），大概就是睡覺了吧！

為了讓小朋友有更多打發時間的事做，來自柏林藝術大學（Berlin University of the Arts）的一群學生，推出了『車窗外實景實境』這樣的車用娛樂系統概念，或許將來可以讓後座的小乘客們更享受這段旅程；目前的能做到的，其實就是透過網路攝影機來捕捉車窗外的畫面，筆電上的軟體則可以將畫面跟遊戲場景結合，隨者窗外不同的景色變化，來增加場景的豐富程度、遊戲的難度；用來測試的遊戲是 一款卷軸式飛行遊戲。

行車玩樂的時候，不僅遊戲場景千變萬化（這也難說XD），車震對於遊戲的影響也是相當有趣。只可惜現在還無法真的把它整合到後車窗來玩，如果哪一天真能做到，或許可以刺激房車的銷售量也不一定。