We are right in the middle of National Robotics Week, which runs April 6-14 and starts a string of events all over the country for makers of all kinds. We’ve listed a few upcoming highlights below:
We have been visiting the Exploratorium in San Francisco again and again since we were teenagers in the early ’90s. And with good cause: The Exploratorium is an unparalleled museum of hands-on science, art, perception, and exploration. It’s not a children’s museum (although it is an amazing place to take children), nor is it a place where you admire giant fossilized skeletons, nor one of those museums that always seems to have a traveling exhibit with a name like “The Science of Jersey Shore.”
Instead, it’s a place full of simple, often-amazing yet not-too-flashy exhibits that (for the most part) you play with to learn about various phenomena. For example, at the Floating in Copper exhibit, you can get a feel for the un-earthly effects that strong magnets have in the presence of a large block of nonmagnetic, highly-conductive material. It’s one thing to read about eddy currents in an article; it’s quite another to release a chunk of metal in mid-air, only to find that it floats down to rest, more gently than a dandelion seed. You may have seen this exact exhibit at other museums (here, for example)— and if so, that’s quite likely because the Exploratorium makes many copies of its exhibits for other museums and publishes plans for others to make their own.
Since moving to the Bay Area in 2005 and starting the Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories blog, we’ve also been honored to present some of our own projects at Exploratorium events over the past few years, including the CandyFab, a Bristlebot workshop at the first Young Makers event, and some of our clock projects at the Open Make event on the theme of “Time.”
Exterior of the Exploratorium, at the Palace of Fine Arts (2010). Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid under CC BY-NC-ND license.Interior of the Exploratorium, at the Palace of Fine Arts (2006). Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid under CC BY-NC license
The Exploratorium has, since its founding in 1969, been located in the exhibit hall of the the Palace of Fine Arts— a huge arc of a building left over from the 1915 Worlds Fair, located in the Marina district of San Francisco, as pictured above. As the name implies, the building was designed to be a museum and was a remarkably suitable home for the Exploratorium. However, a few years ago, it came out in the news that they would be moving out of the Palace of Fine Arts, and into a space on one of the San Francisco Piers. Of course, our hearts sank at hearing this, as we could not imagine any more perfect place for the Exploratorium. Nor could we imagine that they could possibly find a place as large and welcoming anywhere else in San Francisco. We were also worried about parking, as the Palace of Fine Arts was blessed with its own parking lots, a rarity in San Francisco.
We were wrong.
On Saturday, we went to a member preview at their new location at Pier 15, which will be opening on April 17. We took a number of pictures as we explored, and in addition to sharing some of the highlights here, we have put up a flickr set from our visit.
The new location at Piers 15 and 17 on the San Francisco Embarcadero is right between the Ferry Building and Fisherman’s Wharf, in the shadow of the Bay Bridge. A huge advantage of the new location is that it is much easier to get to by public transport than the Palace of Fine Arts was. There’s a MUNI train stop, and it’s just a few blocks from BART and the other public transportation that already comes to the Ferry Building.
There are also plenty of nearby parking garages and lots. We had no problem finding an inexpensive lot to park in for the day, and now taking the train is an option for us.
And it turned out beautifully. Here at the end of the pier, there are a number of new exhibits, many about biology and the bay.
The new location is much bigger: there is three times as much space. This view is looking down one of the corridors, from the location pictured previously. The museum is packed with exhibits as far as the eye can see.
All of the spaces are well designed, and extremely good looking, taking advantage of the abundant natural light.
There are many large open areas, as well as cozy corners and nooks. The Tactile Dome is being rebuilt on a larger scale (in a space with a higher ceiling than this) and will be opening this summer.
Activity in the new bio labs is visible through large windows. In neighboring spaces, we saw them growing continuous replacement plants for the touchable plant exhibits and various organisms for people to look at under the microscopes.
The new location has the same spirit, and despite our expectations, still feels like the Exploratorium. The workshop is just as prominent as before, and still out in the open so that visitors can see new exhibits in progress and old ones being repaired.
Our old favorites on electricity and magnetism (like Daisy Dyno) felt right at home, and were as popular as ever.
The acoustics are much more friendly, making conversations and discussions much more enjoyable.
The one new building on the pier is the Bay Observatory, which has stunning views as well as brand new exhibits on bay topics such as geology, geography and tides. Above is a 3D tide table with the tides for each day represented by a the shape of each piece of plastic marked with the time and lunar information.
Since this was an early preview, many exhibits are still in progress or yet to be installed. This outdoor space between Piers 15 and 17 will be opening soon and the museum plans to eventually develop additional space on Pier 17.
Congratulations to the Exploratorium on such a successful move and wonderful new home!
The museum will be opening to the public on April 17, and tickets will be available online soon. There are additional member previews coming up on April 6 and 9 as well— check the calendar for details and other upcoming events.
Over at How 2 Today, Chris Connors has written about his Egg Lathe project, which was inspired by the Egg-Bot. It’s made with recycled materials and he has published design files and posted a video of how it works. Looks like a great project, and a fun way to decorate eggs.
Hey all you Raspberry Pi and Eggbot lovers: over on Instructables, user crgfrench shows how to load Inkscape and the Eggbot extensions on your Raspberry Pi. He even goes so far as to mount the Raspberry Pi on the Eggbot for compact plotting.
We’re no strangers to seeing an occasional hard-to-look-at article of clothing. However, we recently came across the above pictured dress (the Signature Shift Dress by Julie Brown), and noticed a peculiar quality about it. The pattern of angled, high-contrast shapes makes it remarkably difficult to see the actual shape of the dress underneath that print.
Now, where have we seen this kind of thing before?
Ah yes: Dazzle Camouflage! Dazzle camouflage was used in WWI to make ships more difficult to identify and target, by disguising their size, configuration, range and orientation. This is different from traditional camouflage, which tries only to minimize visibility, but can be surprisingly effective. In the photo above, of the USS Mahomet in port (circa November 1918), it’s hard to make out even the out the shape of the ship.
Additional good examples of ships with dazzle camouflage can be seen here, here, and here (in an article that discusses the design process for the patterns).
Curiously, dazzle camouflage seems to have made a recent comeback in fashion.
This Print Wrap dress at Uupto distorts the model’s curves in strange ways. Thanks to the “mountain range” in the middle, one might initially perceive this to be a maternity dress.
The Print and Proper dress at Modcloth is another new example.
And the Poleci Women’s Cross Front Striped Longsleeve Top from FavBuy creates the illusion of a strangely misshapen abdomen.
The Elbow Sleeve Tiered Dress at Venus. The interrupted, striped, spiraling pattern creates the illusion (perhaps assisted by photoshop) that the diameter of the dress is somewhat smaller than it is in reality.
You can dazzle all the way to your toes, with these matching Black and White Platform Heels at Venus.
Some designs stray from simple black and white geometric patterns, but still effectlively confuse the eye, such as this Jersey Maxi Dress by Julie Brown. Worth noting is that many of the original dazzle patterns on ships were brightly colored, too.
Of course, this is not the first time dazzle camouflage has appeared in fashion. At the time that dazzle camouflage was first introduced, the public was fascinated by it.
The Dazzle Camouflage Pinboard by user Saruzza has some wonderful historical fashion examples, including a reference to a 1919 Dazzle Ball at the Chelsea Club.
From a contemporary article (via camoupedia), comes this account:
Four British naval officers, distinguished for their success at camouflage, had charge of designing the dresses, and the ballroom looked like the Grant Fleet with all its warpaint on, ready for action. The jazz bands produced sounds that have the same effect upon the ear as this “disruptive coloration” has upon the eye.
A themed masquerade ball is one thing, but the patterns did also make their way into the mainstream culture of the time:
This picture of dazzle camouflage bathing suits from the 1919 New York Tribune was provided as a visual supplement to an excellent audio post by 99% Invisible on disruptive camouflage.
And as for the future? No discussion of dazzle would be complete with out mentioning CV Dazzle, which covers methods of using makeup and hairstyles to thwart face recognition software. Perhaps soon e-ink fabrics will also provide changeable displays that disrupt QR and barcode readers, as well as other visual tracking systems.
To celebrate, our friend Samantha brought in her knitted Pi blanket to share. After the first hexagon with the letter ? embroidered on it, the first 127 digits of Pi are shown using the resistor color code to represent the value of the digit. Samantha is donating this quilt to the Project Linus, an organization that gives blankets to children who are seriously ill, traumatized, or otherwise in need.
For those in the San Francisco area, the Exploratorium is celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Pi Day from 1 pm to 3 pm in front of their soon-to-open new location at Pier 15.
The comet Pan-STARRS is currently in view! Did you glimpse it last night?
This beautiful photo was taken by Exploratorium Staff member Adam Esposito last night (March 12) from the Berkeley Hills with a telephoto lens. Uranus is actually right near the comet as well. Mars in the clouds below.
TO VIEW TONIGHT: most of USA and northern hemisphere should look west, about 30 minutes after sunset. You may be able to see it below the crescent moon. It’s close to the sun so only after sunset is it briefly visible in the darkening sky.
We were able to see it last night with a Galileoscope, in spite of haze and an aggressive tree-line, by locating the moon and panning left. SpaceWeather.com has a helpful sky map, too.
The challenge of this year’s game, entitled Ultimate Ascent was to build a robot that could compete to score points on a team with two other robots by shooting frisbees into goals and climbing a pyramid structure while defending against an opposing alliance of three robots.
The Firebirds named their frisbee shooting robot “Oddjob” after the James Bond villain who throws his bowler hat with lethal results. One of the green-shirted safety advisors at the event was coincidentally named James Bond, and he was a good enough sport to allow us to take his picture with Oddjob.
We ran into a robot from team 840 sponsored by our friends at Skallops which had a wonderfully appropriate warning sticker on the frisbee shooter reading “DANGER: DECAPITATION HAZARD.”
We’re relatively new to the world of FIRST, which can be almost cult-like, with participants identifying themselves by team number like a code word or secret handshake. A smaller number means a team that was established earlier. Over the last 20 or so years, the organization has managed to channel the enthusiasm of teenagers which is normally directed toward athletes and celebrities instead toward engineering, programming, and building. The teams are fiercely spirited, bringing their mascots and supporters to cheer them on at competitions. It is truly incredible to see this much energy directed towards a science and engineering event.
Robots are awarded more points for goals scored during autonomous play, and the highly competitive field is steered toward collaboration and mutual assistance by the alliance aspect. The teams work hard to make sure that their robot will be an asset to any alliance in the hopes that even if they don’t rank highly enough in qualification rounds to be a team captain themselves, they’ll be chosen by one of the alliance captains and advance to the finals. They actively share tools and materials with the other teams, as any of the other robots could be on their alliance during a given match. Parts request announcements in the pits are filled almost as soon as they are announced, although when we heard “Team #### needs an FTL drive” over the PA, we could only laugh.
One of the more visible ways we were able to share was with our yellow gaffers tape, which team 3495 used to make their engraved sign stand out with their team color. We were the beneficiaries of parts, too, with another team generously sharing a metal shaft when one of ours bent during a match.
The teams are typically student driven, with mentors playing an advisory role, supporting the students as they work through problems of design, mechanics, building, programming, and team dynamics. The students work incredibly hard to design and build the robot during just six weeks allowed as the “build season,” and then during the competitions fine-tune, fix, and improve their machine. Even the mascot works just as hard on the robot as everyone else.
Through a combination of determination, hard work and luck, our team came out of the qualifying rounds with the top ranking, and then made it all the way to the final game of the elimination rounds, with their ally teams 3970 and 2643. However, our friends from team 840, along with allies 295 and 1678 bested us to win the finals, 2 matches to 1, earning a spot at the championships.
Besides strict competition, there are additional awards and honors are given at these events to recognize technical ingenuity, good design and spirit. Our team received the Judges award, which was summed up rather accurately by one team member as being the award for “general awesomeness.” Congratulations to all of the participating teams, every one of which pulled off building a robot that could play an incredibly challenging game! Our team is headed next to the Silicon Valley Regional event April 4-6, but there are events every week all over the world leading up to the championships April 24-27 in St. Louis. All events are free and open to the public, so get out and cheer on your local robots!
If you have a chance, find a way to mentor, sponsor, or otherwise volunteer to help out your local robot team or competition. FIRST, and its several associated programs directed at younger students, are some of the best ways that we have to inspire youngsters to pursue careers in science and engineering. And that’s something that benefits us all.
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