Claytronics – Synthetic Reality
Interesting article about “Claytronics” or programmable matter – “The day when doctors routinely made house calls may be past, but that doesn’t mean that someday you won’t routinely see your doctor in your home — with emphasis on “see.” That is to say, your doctor could physically work out of her office. But a three-dimensional lookalike, assembled from perhaps a billion tiny, BB-like robots, could be her stand-in in your home. She could talk with you, touch you, look at you, all under the control of the real, if distant, doc.” Link. Project page here.
The new ASIMO is closer to the robots that eventually revolt in all the science fiction movies “Honda Motor debuted a new ASIMO humanoid robot which features the ability to pursue key tasks in a real-life environment such as an office and an advanced level of physical capabilities. Compared to the previous model, the new ASIMO achieves the enhanced ability to act in sync with people – for example, walking with a person while holding hands. A new function to carry objects using a cart was also added.” Pictures and videos on the site. Thanks Justin! 
Print out a working plastic gun, or a self contained puzzle…Sascha from wmmna writes “The design products-department at the Royal College in London teamed up with a company called 3D Systems to get their hands on some state-of-the-art rapid-prototyping equipment. The brief was to create projects that are not prototypes but products that couldn’t have been made with any other technique. The results were quite stunning and point towards a future of manufacturing that seems to be swiftly approaching…” 
Just another creepy addition to our 
Interesting and sorta gross “epiSkin jewelry extends biological identity by combining technology and design into a new decorative body surface. This project is an exploration into the decorative technological control over biology to create an artifact which is a hybrid of both. Cultured in a lab, this biological jewelry is made of epithelia cells which grow to create an artificial skin. The cells are grown into custom designed forms, controlled by the artist. The cells are incubated for a period of time, following which they are stained with a custom dye. The skin is then visibly sealed into a wearable object.” [
Great article by Cory Doctorow in the NYTimes about FabLabs and beyond…“Plastic created the age of whimsical forms. Suddenly a radio could look like a moo cow. A chair could look like an egg. Toy ray guns could bulge and swoop. The exuberant designers of the golden age of plastic explored all the wacky, nonfunctional, decorative shapes that household objects could take. Now that same plasticity is coming to microcontrollers, the computer chips that act as brains for the chirping, dancing, listening and seeing devices that line our knickknack shelves and dashboards and fill our pockets.” 
