Buglabs and Open source Hardware

Buglabs is a tech company that has managed to put a modular gadget concept on the market with which people can use their creativity and build any kind of device they want. It consists of different modules (i.e. Camera, LCD display, GPS, motiontracker) which can be plugged together just like lego bricks. The company offers a place for people to share their creations and contributions to the software code. The company has a wiki section where all CAD files and software code are displayed showing the true spirit of opensource. It is a beautiful project and I hope to be able to try it out!

Buglabs

Check it out!

Light DIYstrict - Build, Plug , Play

I just finished the drawings of the DIYstrict Light for Letsevo. Super simple and easy to build, you can leave on the floor to give your house a mine field look or hang from the ceiling.

Step by Step:

DIYstrict light - Build, Plug and Play!

Letsevo TV: My stroke of insight

Brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor explains how our right and left brain hemispheres controls our lives by sharing her own experiences of a brain stroke. Her talk truly moved me, absolutely brilliant.

An object without a proper name, yet.

Choosing a name for an art object can be quite challenging actually. Maybe that’s the reason for so many “untitled” art works out there, it can be also that many artists who name their artworks Untitled just don’t give a F@&k about names after all. I didn’t think too much about it until I had to name an object I created, and I give a F@&k actually, and that’s what this story is about, theorizing about the names and not names of objects. At the end, I leave you with the challenge to help me out, with the art piece above.

Although I am positive that the name of an art work doesn’t make it an better art piece, I do think it’s important. Picture yourself, wondering through a contemporary art gallery, imagine you know nothing about formal Art (at least you didn’t study it), you stand in front of what seems to be a group of 8 randomly displayed, white “marshmalowish” balls sitting on a room filled with sand. You are in front of the a contemporary art installation, and you think: what the Hell? next, puzzled, you go to the name plate and it says: Untitled, 1998 Mr. Artist - Rocks; sand and marshmallow. what the F@&k! you almost feel like screaming. Houston we have a problem. Yep, I have been there too my dear reader! The name was the only clue to bring some understanding to the object without post graduating in the history of arts. People get angry, many feel very bad. What a sad story, at least in my opinion.

In order to fight for the democratization of art we have to fight for more satisfied art consumers, I am starting today a movement against Untitled artworks, for the sake of the mere mortals who don’t have a degree in Art but who just want to have a go in understanting the story being told by the artist, on the fly, on the spot. How we are going to do this? No, please, lets not come up with sticker tags, or barcodes…that after you scaning it with your iphone, link to the wikipedia article of that art work. Lets give this artists some homework to do! send them letters! require some explanation =) they will like it.

I didn’t do my homework I have to confess, ’cause the art object up there still features the Untitled flag. Well, ok, at least I am here, writing about it.

But the problem of my Untitled art object is still not solved.

Here is what I propose:

I tell you what motivated me to build the object above, what I want to say with it. I will tell you the names I already came up with but ain’t entirely satisfied with and if then, you feel like participating…still…you shout a name you think the art piece should have.

Deal?

Neptuno Submarine, a small step towards a more natural way of exploring the oceans - Part 2

In part 2 of this series of posts, I will be explaining some of aspects of nature’s design that appeared during the research phase of the Neptuno Submarine. How many fins should a fin propelled submarine feature and how are they arranged? such question can only be answered when we stat to understand the evolution of maritime swimmers and their behavior. Lets begin with: Form, Kinematics and Stiffness.

Finding the Right FORM

Looking at nature for the best Form for a fin propelled submarine can be quite overwhelming at first. Trying to define a specific fin shape for the Neptuno Submarine was no easy task giving into to account the HUGE number of different forms and configurations marine creatures have. Thanks to biology research, a lot has been written on this subject.

Form Specialization - (Illustration: A.Kesel 1997 adapted from P.Webb 1984)

Every maritime biological being has passed through various stages of adaptation in the course of its evolution. Thus optimization to different living conditions eventually led to various forms and characteristics. This illustration from Prof. Dr. A. Kesel shows a comparison chart between fish shapes and their behavior characteristics (read strenghts). On the top we see fishes who can accelerate very quickly,on the left fishes which can maintain very high speeds for long distances and on the right of the chart, fishes that can maneuver very precisely.

How many Fins?

When we look closer to a fish, we see that there are many different fins, and that each one of them has a different function. This seems quite obvious, but understanding their functions can bring key insights for design decisions for future vessels.

Tail Fin: Is the mail propeller for a fish, It has also the function of controlling the direction of the swim.
Pectoral Fin: In most of the fishes, pectoral fins help them control their level (maneuvering up and down) but some coral reef fish have very strong pectoral fins that act as the main propulsion system (i.e. Box Fish).
Dorsal Fin:The Dorsal fin acts like a stability aid, keeping the body from oscillating to much when accelerating.
Pelvic Fin:This fin act like an hydrodynamic parachute help fish to brake and slow down.
Anal Fin:the Anal fin has the same function as the dorsal fin, it is there to keep the ride stable.

Kinematics

the correlation of form and function is clear as you look deeply in to the matter, but there is also one other aspect the greatly influence the performance of swimming, its their body movement.

Most importantly, there is a distinction between the actuating angle of the movements between fish and aquatic mammals. Probably because of their need to come back to the surface for air, aquatic mammals have their fin swinging in the vertical plane, making them more agile in that case. Fish have their bodies swinging in the horizontal plane (there are exceptions like the Plaicefish).

What also varies a lot between species, is the amount of body which swing and the type of curvature that it makes. Basically there are fish that use almost the whole body, and there movement is characterized by a wave that travels through the whole body. Which is often called ondulating movement. One example of this kind of kinematics is found by the eel. What is interesting in these kind of fish is the ability to switch the curve direction of their body movement to swim backwards. These fish are very precise in maneuvering but aren’t that efficient when it comes to speed.
On the other hand, Fish like the Tuna, can achieve enormous speeds underwater (up to almost 100 km/h), by having a partial undulating movement of their bodies which on the end of each swing cause a oscillating movement of the tip of their fin (thus called sub-undulating). Their highly hydrodynamic bodies and stiff/narrow fins make up the perfect combination of high speed swimming for long distances in the many situations when it has to swim in open water looking for food.
By contrast, some fish leaving in the narrow environments like coral reefs have the necessity to maneuver very precisely in very small paths, some times even swim backwards. The box fish for example, uses mainly their pectoral fins for propulsion leaving there caudal fins almost exclusively for steering, there fin Oscillate from side to side, almost as if it were pivoted in one point.

Flexibility X Stiffness

Researchers of the MIT working on this subject of flexible fin propellers have come to many achievements regarding the developments towards a more efficient and quite way of propelling vessels underwater. Their Robotuna project served as a platform for testing different functional aspects aroung the theme.

One particular study caught my attention, which was the study from Michael S. Triantafyllou, Alexandra H. Techet, and Franz S. Hover, entitled: Review of Experimental Work in Biomimetic Foils*. This study tell us a bit about the effects of stiffness in the efficiency of such propulsion systems, drawing the conclusion, that with every different swing frequency/amplitude ratio, a specific stiffness of the fin would bring the best results regarding the consumption of energy. This suggested that there was another variable to be taken into account when designing flexible fin propulsion systems, which is the flexibility of the body of the submarine. * IEEE JOURNAL OF OCEANIC ENGINEERING, VOL. 29, NO. 3, JULY 2004

Wraping it up for now

These were some of the aspects that I considered most important and to keep in mind during the next phase, the conceptual phase. On the next post I will be writing about the design strategies I developed after this analysis and I will also tell a bit about the festo pneumatic muscle technology which I used as starting point for my proposal.

Neptuno Submarine, a small step towards a more natural way of exploring the oceans - Part 1

Some weeks ago I received an email from Thomas Brien, a Marine Design student at Massey University Auckland, New Zealand, who wants some help with his ongoing graduation project, two-person submarine. After writing back and forth I am posting here some detailed info about the Neptuno project, an experiment into to the development of a design concept for future submarines and their propulsion systems. It may help Thomas or anyone else in the pursuit of the little mermaid as I like to put it.

The Neptuno Submarine Concept submarine was my graduation project at the School of Arts and Design in Offenbach, Germany. I time where the letsevo website was not yet existent. It was first presented in the 17 of February of 2005. My supervisors for this project were: my great mentor Prof. Dieter Mankau (HfG Offenbach) and Dr. -Ing. Robert Mayr. The work was sponsored by the german automatization company Festo AG, which had interest in applications for there Pneumatic Muscle Technology.

Goal of the project:
Design a submarine that makes use of new developments in maritime propulsion research, more specifically: Flexible Fin propulsion (read: Fish Propulsion). Learn from what research was telling us about flexible fin propulsion and translate that in to a design of a two person research submarine propelled only, by the means of such propulsion system.

Startpoint at that time (Jun 2004) were research results from the MIT Robotuna (2000), and the “Forelle Flossenantrieb” from the university of Saarland, Germany (1995) along with many scientific articles on the subject from brilliant minds like W. Nachtigall, R. Blickham and Dr. A. Kesel on the great Biona Report.

Neptuno Submarine, 2005, HfG Offenbach. Design: Henrique Monnerat

In the next days, I will we writing a series of posts to explain in detail how I came to this design and what happened after my graduation, when I received a full scholarship from Festo AG to develop a working model of the propulsion system conceptualized for the Neptuno Submarine in form of a post graduation study.

Stay tuned!

Letsevo ECOSK8 Artist Decks

Letsevo is addicted to Art, and the place where art meets product design is where the Ecosk8 Artist Series wants to be. It is with great pleasure that I review here the first collaborations of Artists for what Letsevo would love to have as a future series of skateboard decks. Letsevo wants to thank and congratulate all Artists for taking the time to participate and for there amazing designs! Want to know more about the these Artists, click on.

Click here to go to the gallery site on the ECOSK8 project page

Scan Heads Art Project

Until now, a total of 19 Artists collaborated with 36 Artworks until today, Letsevo’s Favorite Picks are:

Sextafeira from Amnd (Brazil)
~ so many possibilities ~ from opaquEpiphany (Australia)

Thanks for all contributions! It very exciting to see all of your creations! Spread the word, push the button.

Using Yahoo Pipes to aggregate Solidworks tutorials for the e.Moped project

This experiment can turn out to be a new section on the e.Moped project site, It’s my first attempt to use yahoo pipes mashup tool. The pipe you see above can aggregate automatically solidworks+tutorial Tags in the bookmarking service Delicious along with tutorials from the the SWX Design website into an always updating piece of Java Sript code.

The result is what you seen here, a RSS feed capable of being placed into any website. There is a whole range of possibilities with this mashup tool, even combining Flickr, Geo Data Information to Display photos on Google Earth. I see my dream “Skateboard Ramp Mapping Widget” coming soon. Got any ideas for other cool pipes? write on..

Iphone Collaborative Sketching App