Samsung demos ambient light-powered transparent LCD

Evan Baker

Wannabe Snuggie Towel

"The Wearable Towel($19) has three arm openings placed along the side and does not employ the use of any fastener. The Wearable Towel is unisex and can be worn in either a tunic style or a toga style."

Jason Browning

New Concept Laptops

Jason Browning

New "Eco-Friendly" Bike Rack

Jason Browning

Design School in NL

http://www.designacademy.nl/

Once in a while, I check out other design schools. This is one of the top design schools in the Netherlands.

posted by ginni

Club Workshop

Club Workshop offers do-it-yourselfers space and tools to play and creat

Read more:Club Workshop offers do-it-yourselfers space and tools to play and create - The Denver Posthttp://www.denverpost.com/lifestyles/ci_16312606#ixzz1Fjsecgqy

posted by ginni

VW Microbus

VW unveils new model of microbus loved by hippies


Volkswagen's Bulli concept car is presented during the press day of the 81st International Motor show in Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday, March 1, 2011

posted by Levi Smidt

Stools from burned logs

Called Ausgebrannt (German for ‘burnt out’), the project involves stripping bark from the logs then burning away certain sections to create legs.

Posted by Levi Smidt

Cricket Laptop / iPad Stand

Portable, lightweight (400 g) and flexible, Cricket™ is a height-adjustable stand that elevates your laptop or iPad screen to an ergonomic viewing height for cool computing and comfortable viewing. Add a full-size keyboard and mouse to recreate the comfort and productivity of a desktop computer, or use Cricket™ to share your screen for presentations and meetings.

Posted by Levi Smidt

Dr. Michael Braungart on Material Shortages and Designing a New Material World Posted by core jr | 1 Mar 2011 | Comments (2)

evan baker

Researcher behind Liquidmetals Publishes New Blowmolded metal findings

evan baker

Mini Concept Car

Mini Rocketman from Cool Hunting on Vimeo.

Evan Baker

QuaDror

Evan Baker

Skin upgrade

Zhenan Bao's Stretchable, Solar-Powered Robot Skin Stanford University

Robots keep surpassing us in domains considered distinctly human (game shows come to mind). Our ability to sense things with our skin once separated man from machine. Now artificial skin is not only flexible and touch sensitive, but solar-powered.

Stanford researcher Zhenan Bao’s solar-powered system is made up of polymer solar cells that can be stretched up to 30 percent without losing power or sustaining damage. It’s an important distinction that the skin is stretchable, not just flexible, as a flexible skin would still crack if covering body parts such as elbows that extend when they move.

The faux-skin’s base is a flexible elastic organic transistor that contains a touch-sensitive rubber layer. Pyramid shapes in the layer compress when touched, changing the current flow through the transistor. The most sensitive incarnations can feel the minute pressure of a fly's landing.

Adding the solar cell layer allows the skin to be stretched to cover any joint. Even when distorted by the bending, it can still generate the power needed to run its sensors--the solar array is patched into a circuit with a liquid metal electrode that changes shape along with the solar cells.

The skin can also be modified to detect biological or chemical materials. Coating the transistor with a nanometer-thick layer of another molecule that will bind to the substance being sought allows the skin to register when it comes in contact with it. Bao and her team have successfully detected a certain kind of DNA through this process and are now working on using it to detect proteins, which could be useful for medical diagnosis.

The benefits of a solar-powered, stretchable skin extend beyond robotics. If it could be wired to human nerves, it could allow patients with prosthetics to gain back feeling in their missing limbs. It could also one day coat cars, or be worked into clothing such as soldiers’ uniforms, working simultaneously as a biosensor and solar power generator.

Bryce Fesing