Emerging Objects has big, bold plans for 3D-printed rooms
I sat on a 3D-printed bench.
I sat on a 3D-printed bench.
Jeffrey Martin, panoramic photographer and founder of photography site 360Cities, just created the world's largest photo of Tokyo. The image 600,000 pixels wide, and it's a composite made from over 8000 photos. It took Jeffery two days to capture the entire scene from the Tokyo Tower's lower observatory roof using a Canon 7D DSLR and 400mm lens mounted on a Clauss Rodeon gigapixel robot.
We've seen some pretty big things come out of 3D printing projects. An oversized iPhone case! A 3D-printed hexacopter! Even a room-sized urn! But a full-sized 3D-printed replica of a car just seems ludicrous.
Here's something for those who ever wanted to give photos that old timey look but like for real--without any of that Instagram digital post-processing shader mess. The minds at Lomography have brought back the nearly two-century old Petzval portrait lens that you can stick onto your digital-age SLR camera to create stylish photos like it's the 19th century all over again.
3D printing is great for making trinkets, but NASA has some much more ambitious plans in mind: Take, for instance, this 3D-printed rocket injector assembly that NASA, in collaboration with Aerojet Rocketdyne, recently put through a successful "hot-fire" test (which is basically what you think it is--a test burn of a rocket on the ground).
As it turns out, Earth isn't the only Blue Marble floating out in space. For the first time ever, a team of European and American scientists have captured the first-ever true color image of an azure blue exoplanet called HD 189773b.
Three college students from Griffith University in Australia have created an autonomous vehicle using just a smartphone and a toy Power Wheels car. This self-driving car navigates its way around by plotting a GPS course on the smartphone. Meanwhile, it uses a connected camera sensor to see where the road lanes are, and to spot any other hazards on the traffic-laden streets. This one smartphone system also controls all of the car's steering and acceleration.
It's almost as if scientists have never seen a movie before. Researchers at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) have developed the world's first robotic primate called the iStruct robo-ape, thus combining our worst fears of robot uprisings along with a literal Planet of the Apes.
Go ahead and chalk up batteries as the latest, coolest thing you can 3D-print. Researchers at Harvard University and the University of Illinois have developed the world's first 3D-printed battery that happens to be less than one millimeter wide. For the sake of context, that's smaller than a grain of sand.
Researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) have created a small cat-like automaton called the Cheetah Cub Robot. Unlike DARPA's Cheetah or Boston Dynamics's Big Dog, this little robo-cat comes in an adorable size that's meant to prance around like a real feline. D'aww.
If you've ever felt a 3D-printed object? They're typically made of hard, brittle plastic, and tend to be delecate. Now Shapeways is introducing a new, squishy 3D printing material called Elasto Plastic that's more like a soft, pliable piece of rubber than stiff ABS plastic.
The idea of applying a regular computer chip directly to your brain is silly, so scientists at Japan's Yokohama National University have created a new material that can be shaped into complex, conductive microscopic 3D structures. What does that mean? It could potentially lead to custom brain electrodes.
Grumpy Cat--whose real name is Tardar Sauce--is about to become an official movie star. According to Deadline, our most-cranky-faced feline is about to star in a new Garfield-esque feature film produced by Broken Road Productions. No word yet if she'll hate Mondays.
A few weeks ago, we were absolutely excited over the over the prospect of the ProDesk3D, a full-color 3D printer in the works from a New York-based startup named botObjects. Unlike every 3D printer that we've seen so far, the ProDesk3D color palate isn't limited to a handful of pre-colored spools of plastic. This printer promised to create a whole rainbow of colors, not unlike an inkjet printer using a five-color cartridge.
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo has successfully completed its first ever rocket-powered flight earlier this week, as the private spaceship broke the sound barrier as it soared over the Mojave Desert.