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Designer Babies

Xenobots, which were first brought to life back in January, can’t reproduce. Instead, computer scientists program them in a virtual environment and then 3D print their creations out of embryonic cells.

“We are witnessing almost the birth of a new discipline of synthetic organisms,” Columbia University roboticist Hod Lipson, who was not part of the research team, told the NYT. “I don’t know if that’s robotics, or zoology or something else.”

Israeli scientists are using 3D printing to reconstruct damaged coral reefs.

Don’t be stupid be innovative. Keep you, your friends and family safe. Here is a collection of free 3D printable tools that may help in this fight against coronavirus.

Here is a selection of the most useful 3D models to make with a 3D printer agains coronavirus covid-19.

The 19 3D-printable parts that make up the mask are visible on the Maker Mask website along with details on materials needed, download instructions, videos, the ability to donate to the cause and more. The cost of each finished mask, printed in about three hours, is estimated to be between $2 and $3.

A technology veteran and a 3D-printing “savant” have teamed with other members of industry, health care and government to launch Maker Mask, a Seattle nonprofit creating medically endorsed, reusable protective masks using everyday 3D printers.

Continue reading “Maker Mask launches in Seattle using 3D-printing technology to produce protective gear” »

Scientists are using 3D printing to create bioengineered body parts such as eyes, ears, teeth, hearts, skin, bone, and even ovaries.

This is really cool. In times of adversity. Intelligence often offers innovation. If you have a 3D printer get to making some masks.

A team at the Medical University of South Carolina came up with an idea for anyone with a 3D printer to make a protective mask.

If you’ve never heard of a tensegrity structure, you should stop now and watch the video below. In it, [The Action Lab] shows a 3D printed table that is held up only with strings. We didn’t say suspended by strings but held up. Or so it appears. The model is from Thingiverse, but it is one of those things you have to see to believe.

The basic idea is pretty simple. Strings have a lot of tensile strength but collapse under the slightest compressive force. The arrangement of strings puts the force on the center string which is essentially hanging — the force is pulling the string down. The other three strings aren’t just for show, though, they keep the structure from tipping over in any one direction.

Continue reading “Table Held Up” »

When you’re a software and hardware engineer sometimes you need a little challenge. Engineer Robert Lucian Chiriac’s latest Raspberry Pi creation can detect license plates and read the characters with fairly decent accuracy. This is an involved project that relies on machine learning to properly interpret images from the camera into discernible text.

The primary license plate reading function is constructed using three separate applications (there are more used throughout the project, but these three are critical). Chiriac used the YOLOv3 object detection algorithm to create a bounding box around each license plate it detects from the camera input. The image within the bounding box is sent to CRAFT, a text detecting application. Once the location for each character in the plate has been identified, the information is passed along to CRNN to predict the actual text.

Chiriac mounted the Raspberry Pi, GPS module, 4G module and Pi camera to his car’s rear-view mirror with a 3D-printed unit he designed. The Pi camera is even adjustable with a ball-joint swivel mount.

World’s Largest 3D Printer re: Philip K. Dick on 3/1/2020: Science Fiction in the News.