futuristic-concept=believe?: 20 May 2007

Saturday, May 26, 2007

reactable: improvisation demo

http://mtg.upf.edu/reactable

The reactable, is a multi-user electronic music instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving physical objects on a luminous table surface. By moving and relating these objects, representing components of a classic modular synthesizer, users can create complex and dynamic sonic topologies, with generators, filters and modulators, in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.

This instrument is being developed by a team of digital luthiers (Sergi JordÃ , Martin Kaltenbrunner, GÃ¼nter Geiger and Marcos Alonso), at the Music Technology Group within the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain.

Chevy Volt 1

Chevy Volt 1, originally uploaded by drocpsu.

Chevy Volt electric concept car at the 2007 New York Auto Show

Walt Disney Concert Hall

Walt Disney Concert Hall, originally uploaded by ▐ X y L e▐.

- X y L e - © 2007

This is the Walt Disney Concert Hall , Los Angeles, California. It feels good to get out and about again, its been awhile since I've gone on a photography trip. Hope you guys like it.

I used a perfectly exposed RAW Image to generate the HDR.

Friday, May 25, 2007

Sony's flexible, full-color OLED

Sony unveiled what is billed as the world's first flexible, full-color OLED display built on organic thin-film transistor (TFT) technology. The 2.5-inch prototype display supports 16.8 million colors at a 120 x 160 pixel resolution, is 0.3 mm thick and weighs 1.5 grams.

Spaceship 2 Interior -Ready for Launch '08

Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic's Spaceship 2...test flights begin next year and passenger flights soon thereafter. Posted by Casey Kazan.

Transformers TV ad: Vibration

Toyota's one-man i-unit vehicle is ahead of its time

What do you get when you cross the Segway with one of those wheelchair scooters? My guess is you'd end up with something like the i-unit, the latest concept vehicle to emerge from the labs at Toyota.

This one-person "personal mobility" vehicle, as Toyota describes it, can actually make itself smaller when moving slowly to take up less space, and then spread out more to optimize its center of gravity for higher speeds. At an eye-poppingly light 396 pounds, and measuring no more than 6 feet long, the i-unit (enough with the freakin' i-naming already!) boasts a three-foot turning radius, is powered by a lithium-ion battery, and includes onboard systems that store your favorite music and customize the body's color based on driver preferences.

It all sounds incredibly cool, and ultra-environmentally friendly, but you wouldn't catch me in one so long as I had to share the road with 4-ton Hummers. In other words, at this stage, categorize the i-unit as wishful thinking. — Tony Kontzer

Toyota, via Shiny Shiny

Design Concept: Music Vortex Mixes Music with Water, Sends Ripples Through Your Soul

The Music Vortex's mission is to visualize music using the natural movement of water as it's influenced by sound waves. Its bottom section function like a normal speaker, but check out that little bowl of water on top that vibrates and ripples with the music, all lit up with a spacey blue glow. You adjust the volume on the speaker with a little knob in the middle. What, no remote?

Designed by Eric Zhang, this concept was the bronze prize winner at a Chinese design competition held by speaker manufacturer 3Nod. Maybe the company will take this idea and expand it into a larger scale, perhaps turning it into a swimming pool with a giant subwoofer at the bottom. That might be a good way to experience your music firsthand, and at the same time get sweet revenge on those neighbors with the constantly barking dog. – Charlie White

Music Vortex, Water Speaker [Yanko Design]

Holographic storage technology coming soon

InPhaseDrive - Holographic storage technology

Some revolutionary and great storage technology really deserve our attention here. The holographic storage system has become a reality now. This technology has caused a 40-year of hard work in research by the Scientists, which just managed to get commercialized now. InPhase Technologies, which spun off from Bell Labs in year 2000, is planning to ship evaluation units in summer then followed by volume shipments in fall. This storage technology has great size, which it consists of a drive and a 600GB write-once disc that is equivalent to 64 DVDs. The first holographic products are certainly not meant for mass-market. As a 600GB disc will cost around $180, and the drive costs about $18,000.00. Potential users include banks, libraries, government agencies etc.

source

Holographic, Holographic storage, InPhase Technologies, storage technology

La Géode

La Géode, originally uploaded by Saskya.

Haven't been inside yet, wonder if it is worth a visit. But the outside is cool enough already!

futuristic look at the new concept FORD

futuristic look at the new concept FORD, originally uploaded by mitoff.

A desktop robot to light up your life

The clip below shows AUR - a cross between a desklamp and a robotic arm. Guy Hoffman of the Robotic Life research group in MIT's Media Lab built it as part of his PhD thesis.

He describes AUR as a "collaborative lighting assistant". A lamp that helps you out in ways that its inanimate antecedents couldn't.

Remarkably, it recently starred in a specially written play. You can see some video from the rehearsal on this page. This wasn't (only) for fun, either, as Hoffman thinks that there are parallels between acting, and designing robots:

"Both human-centric interactive robot designer and actor are in the business of injecting life into a lifeless object, be it a hierarchy of joints and motors for one, or an arc of dry dialog lines and stage directions for the other," he says. "Both robot designer and actor have to analytically break down the complex emergent constellation called 'behavior' and reconstruct it in an inherently fake, but ultimately meaningful - or at least believable - way."

A technical paper (pdf) lays out these ideas in more detail. Hoffman claims that the lamp is meant to be "non-anthropomorphic", but I don't see how. It has a vertical body with a head on top it seems to look around with. AUR can't jump yet like Pixar's animated anglepoise lamps, but it seems pretty anthropomorphic to me.

AUR is also reminiscent of Roco 'the world's first expressive computer' created by the same group at MIT. It's a regular LCD monitor mounted on a jointed arm that lets it signal disapproval if your posture is bad. Here's a video (quicktime).

Via

Tom Simonite - online technology reporter

Band in a Bubble NYC TPG Architecture

Witness the genesis of this amazing project from the earliest concept sketches to a walk through the built space. Set to music, it even includes a time-lapse view of the Bubble being built out on Pier 54. WHAT IS THE BUBBLE?

This roughly 2,000 sq. ft. TPG-designed Bubble is the epicenter of a multimedia event, Dr Pepper's Band in a Bubble. The pop rock band Cartel will record their next album while dwelling full-time for 20 days in the ample abode.

Members of TPG's design team used the relatively new and tremendously nifty modeling program called SketchUp (shown within, rendered in a web-friendly format) to convey the structural, interior and branding components. Much to their delight, the built Bubble looks exactly like the 3-D digital model!

The web audience can look inside the Bubble via a 23-camera voyeuristic experience and partake in additional "2.0" content. MTV is producing a reality TV show that documents the event.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

The Opus by Zaha Hadid

The Opus, a mixed-use commercial and retail development in Dubai designed by Zaha Hadid, is being launched in London today.

The £235 million project by developer Omniyat Properties will be located at the Business Bay development on the Dubai waterfront.

More details when we have them.

>> see more architecture in the Gulf on our Google map of the region

Mac of the Future (Concept drawing)

[Source]

New TAG Heuer Calibre 360 Concept Chronograph

TAG Heuer shows the first ever 1/100th of a second mechanical wrist chronograph at the Baselworld 2005.

Last year TAG Heuer showed the Monaco V4 Concept Watch. The TAG Heuer Calibre 360 Concept watch is the world's most accurate wrist chronograph.

To ensure precision adjustment and independent operation, the basis of the Calibre 360 Concept Chronograph is an automatic movement, the TAG Heuer Calibre 7, with a power-reserve of 42 hours and a heart beating at 28,800 vibrations per hour.

[Source]

Z.Island Kitchen

The “Z. Island by DuPont™ Corian®” is a sensory-receptive kitchen appliance that consists of two free-standing island units, a wall modular cabinet system, wall cladding system (advanced sound and light diffusion capabilities), and a host of multimedia equipment. At the touch of a button, users will be able to turn on music, browse the internet, or create ambience (lighting) via a control panel. Additional pics after the jump.

[Source]

Pics of Nissan Terranaut reveal vehicle perfect for Picard and his crew

Posted by John Neff
Filed under: Concept Cars, Minivans/MPVs

Nissan of Europe has released a bevy of images showing every nook and cranny of its upcoming Geneva-bound concept, the Terranaut. The 4x4, according to the company, was designed for “scientists, geologists, archaeologists or adventurers” whose office is the great outdoors.

It seats three people in an interior quite obviously modeled after a U.S.S. Enterprise shuttlecraft. The “spherical laboratory” is accessed from a seat that swivels 360 degrees to give any intrepid scientist access to all of the vehicle’s workstations. Those workstations leave room for only one passenger-side door, while the driver’s side has two swing-out doors with no b-pillar. What’s the chance of seeing the Terranaut on the street? Pretty good if you own a Holladeck.

4-D is so much cooler than 3-D

The medical technology of Firefly's futuristic world is here and it's in CANADA! The CAVEman 3-D imaging system can map an entire human body and all of its systems over a period of time, that makes it 4-D! Four Dimensional viewing, so cool!

The Aggressor: For a Fuel Efficient Army

Remember when the military was on the fore-front of innovation? When what we did at war pulled the world into the future? I'm not saying that war was ever good...I'm just saying that it used to be a lot smarter.

Which is why it's nice to see the US Army actually considering energy efficiency when building a vehicle. The Aggressor is a diesel-electric hybrid two seater designed for reconnaissance and light transport. While it can easily hit 80 mph and has a zero to forty time of just four seconds, the coolest feature is probably its stealth mode.

The Aggressor can switch to an all-battery mode that makes the vehicle virtually silent. The military initially looked to fuel cells to provide this feature. But then the impracticality of shipping hydrogen around a battlefield hit them, so they paid some attention to the rest of the world and went with batteries.

The Aggressor could be ready for operations within the next couple years. And while it's kinda sad that these could be the first hybrids Iraq will ever see, it is at least better than the alternative: More Hummers.

Via Popular Mechanics

Sony's world's first 16.7 million color flexible OLED

Filed under: Displays

Oh boy, another bendy display we won't likely see on the market any time soon. This time, it's Sony's turn to tout with this, their 2.5-inch, 160 x 120 pixel OLED display on a flexible plastic film. Better yet, this organic TFT delivers a relatively stellar 16.7 million colors compared to the 262k and 16k colors Samsung and LG.Philips, respectively, were showing off last week. That's a world's first 24-bit color depth for these types of displays. Take that Samsung. The display also measures a mere 0.3-mm thin which easily bests the hapless Korea (and Dutch) giants. The only downside (if you call it that) is the display's "greater than" 1000:1 contrast ratio compared to Samsung's 10,000:1 rating. But by now you've learned to take contrast measurements with a grain of salt, right?

[Via Impress]

Boeing 787 Dreamliner VIP Edition

Joseph Lau paid a hefty $153-million for this Boeing 787 Dreamliner VIP edition, complete with “complete with SkyLoft, vaulted ceilings, spiral staircases and video wall displays.” Lots more pictures after the jump.

It’s the same airplane you and I are going to use, but instead of being crammed in seat 36D between Biff, the overweight shoe salesman, and Chantal, the aerobic teacher from Fort Lauderdale, he’ll have a 2,404 square-feet luxurious cabin all for himself

[via Gizmodo]

Toyota i-Unit exoskeleton concept

The first time I had a glimpse at an exoskeleton was watching Ripley kick some Queen Alien ass back in Aliens. While the Toyota i-Unit is not meant for such violent means, it is a concept that was developed to increase personal mobility while minimizing occupied space and energy consumption with its lightweight and compact size. A low center of gravity ensures stable handling even when you're moving around in high speed mode. No idea on how much one of these will cost, but it sure as heck will be more expensive than your regular Toyota. Hopefully folks won't misuse this and steamroll over innocent pedestrians...

End War Trailer

Tom Clancy's next game EndWar in which takes place in a futuristic world during WW3.

General Electric Landscape

General Electric Landscape
Uploaded by tronicstudio

Duration: 01:07Taken: 22 May 2007Location: New-York, United States
Tronic created a futuristic landscape to convey a message from GE

Philips' 42-, 47-, and 52-inch Ambilight LCDs go 1080p, 120Hz, LED backlighting

Filed under: Displays

Has it really been 10 years since the first Ambilight television? Does anyone care? After all, the press release was issued back in January at CES and missed by nearly everyone, including us. Well, Philips certainly cares and aims to celebrate by dishing out a triplet of Ambilight LCDs ranging size from 42-, 47-, and 52-inches. As you'd expect, they've got all the sweetest buzzwords covered: 1080p, 120Hz, LED backlighting. They also feature Philips' Perfect Pixel HD processing engine, plenty of HDMI inputs (3x on the 52-incher) and of course, Philips' Ambilight glow for a more immersive experience with reduced eye strain -- or so says Philips. Priced at $2,999 for the Ambilight Full Surround (independent lighting on all four sides) 42-inch 42PFL9832D (pictured) or $2,799 for the 47-inch 47PFL9732D and $3,599 for the big 52-inch 52PFL7432D with Ambilight 2 for that left and right glow. All are expected to roll Stateside as early as June.

[Via Electronic House]

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Tomahawk Motorcycle

Tomahawk Motorcycle - kewego
A motorbike with a 10 cylinder 8.3 litre engine and a massive 500hp, making it look like something out of a futuristic movie.

Keywords: extreme massive motorcycle futuristic motorbike tomahawk 10 cylinder 83 litre engine 500hp

Video from idog

Future ipods?

A look at what ipods may look like in the future/6th generation.

Concept mouse checks your heart rate

Will the next advancement in computer-mouse technology involve personal health? Designer Kwok Lau thinks so, conceiving a mouse with sensors and a heart-rate monitor for anyone who wants to check their pulse while they're working. 'Cause, y'know, sitting in front of a PC can often push your body to the limit. I suppose if you've got a heart condition or some other kind of health issue, it's not a bad idea (certainly better than that mouse with the LCD screen), and if you get too stressed out playing Doom 3, the mouse will alert your hospital or caregiver via your PC.

It's kind of unclear from the rendering, but it appears the heartbeat indicator is either on the bottom of the mouse or on a separate display. For it to be useful, it had better be the latter. And the mouse's name, "Heartbeat Indicator," is pretty underwhelming, too. How about "MouseBeat" instead? I guess that sounds more like some kind of weekly podcast about computer mice. Hey, idea city… — Peter Pachal

Via Yanko Design

China’s “Science-Fiction” Skyscrapers & Mega-Cities

Many of China's ancient cities are racing to become new regional urban centers with almost other-worldy futuristic building booms. One of these cities is the new mega-city of Shenzen (image), a centre of foreign investment and one of the fastest growing cities in the world. It is also the busiest port in China.

Some of you may be aware of the architect Steven Holl, famous for some of the world's most unique building designs including the Linked Hybrid in Beijing which features several raised residential towers connected by bridges. Well now he’s lowering his sites a little, and turning what we all know on its side.

The Vanke Center, soon to be located in Shenzen, has taken what was once tall, and made it long. Hovering above the ground, this new design promotes more communication within, and provides a shaded walkway underneath.

Built with a set of geothermal wells to provide heating and cooling, grey-water recycling and a sun-protected aluminum façade, this building manages to stand apart from the social norm of putting corporations’ greed before the social good.
This building is almost its own little city. As long as the Empire State Building is tall, the Vanke Center contains apartments, malls, hotels and the like to minimize the amount of congestion outside of the center. It eliminates the need to travel to work, and subsequently adding to the already clogged motorways of China.

As Holl writes, “As a vision of tropical sustainability for the 21st century, Vanke Center incorporates several new sustainable elements designed specifically for the development. The floating building creates a flexible area of shaded landscape underneath the building, allowing sea and land breezes to pass through the site. The open plan provides space for the intricate multi-faceted daily life at the ground level to evolve and change.”

Is it just me, or does anyone else want to move to Shenzen?!

Be sure to check out a related post: China's Emerging Cities of the Future

Posted by Josh Hill

Links

http://www.stevenholl.com/PT370_1C.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Holl
http://www.stevenholl.com/PT337_1C.htm

The Grohe Ondus, showering you with technology

While the digital world has penetrated almost every part of our lives, the smallest room in the house — with its plumbing valves and pipes — has always remained remarkably analog in operation. Now a German company wants to change that. The AquaFountain from Grohe's überstylish Ondus collection lets you set the exact water temperature on a keypad, with memory settings for two different users. It also boasts a phone that will pause the shower should the boss ring in mid scrub, a clock so you can see if you're late for the 7:20 train, and a timer that limits your own shower time so you can feel like you're saving the planet.

While all of this James Bond gadgetry is fine, I wonder what happens when the boiler conks out and there's no hot water to give? I guess than never happens in Germany. Pricing to be determined, but I'll go out on a limb and say "not cheap." — Michael Trei

Grohe Ondus, via Coolest Gadgets

How Geeks Design Elevators

Ok, so it’s not exactly an elevator, but it definitely looks more fun to ride wouldn’t you agree? Unfortunately, this gigantic, spiraling slide is located in Belgium. More pictures after the break.

For Carsten Höller, the experience of sliding is best summed up in a phrase by the French writer Roger Caillois as a ‘voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind’. The slides are impressive sculptures in their own right, and you don’t have to hurtle down them to appreciate this artwork. What interests Höller, however, is both the visual spectacle of watching people sliding and the ‘inner spectacle’ experienced by the sliders themselves, the state of simultaneous delight and anxiety that you enter as you descend. (Tate Modern)

[via Tekenstein]

[Via TechEBlog]

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Gizmodo: Design: Desks: Sliding Puzzle Desk Concept

Remember those sliding picture puzzles that terrorized you as a kid? Now that idea has been taken to a new level with this concept design of a sliding puzzle desk by Hsien Chang. The panels on top of the desk slide around to unveil different storage areas where a variety of your goods can be kept and organized. This desk only has a total of four tiles covering five different compartments, so it is a fairly easy puzzle to navigate through. –Travis Hudson

Puzzle Table [Yanko]

more at > designcorner.blinkr.net

Worlds first display made of concrete

More info at www.innovationlab.dk/uk

Verizon launching FiOS Interactive Media Guide

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Verizon FiOS Interactive Media Guide (aka FiOS 2)

Verizon may be upping the prices for DVR usage, but now we get the chance to see what that extra fee buys you. According to Dave Zatz, Verizon is launching FiOS Interactive Media Guide -- also known as FiOS 2 -- in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with rollouts occurring nationwide via software upgrades this summer. There are plenty of features to bullet-point, including an all-new 32-bit interface with 8-bit transparency, tabbed interfaces with a better central focus, global content searches (that also include local Media Manager content like photos and music), trailers and poster art for On Demand content, and traffic and weather widgets. See our gallery below for more screencaps from the FiOS presentation.

[Via Zatz Not Funny]

Gallery: Verizon launches FiOS Interactive Media Guide

gds-audio R-01

The unique R-01 concept sets new standards in the field of product design and sound authenticity. What distinguishes our speakers is the extraordinary cabinet form based on the idea that “form follows function”. Stagnant waves are avoided right from the beginning because of the construction. The form of the front panel avoids undesirable reflections which would considerably strain the music enjoyment as it is the case with ordinary speakers. Additionally, the front panel is tilted backwards in an 85° angle to balance the delay differences of the single chassis. The carrier matrix in the interior creates a high stability by its rib form. The principle of the bridge arch construction is used here and gives the side walls an enormous stiffness. The result is that undesirable cabinet resonance is effectively avoided. By the use of a passive radiator the sound, which is radiated backwards from the bass-midrange, is efficiently used. This measure enables us to reach a very precise bass response and a high efficiency of our speakers whereby the potential of the R-01 already develops at low amplifier performances of about 45 Watt and 8 Ohm. The stand filled with sand or lead grit also has the function of a pass-through for the cable. The advantage is that no connection disturbs the stylistic optic

MIT's stackable concept car

The Smart Cities team at MIT is tackling the problem of city traffic congestion -- still left untouched by the Segway -- with a "stackable" car to be used as part of a public transportation program, much like those bicycle-sharing programs in Europe, and stowed like a shopping cart. The wheels turn 360 degrees and contain the suspension and motor, so, along with providing a level of mobility fit for a city, they allow a new type of passenger compartment, replete with customizable displays and seats with "fingers" to catch you in a crash. It all sounds well and good, but we'll have to see see how much of this tech makes it into the final prototype, which is to be built by GM upon the MIT group's completion of the design.

[Via The Raw Feed]

Interactive LED Coffee Table

Why settle for a boring old glass coffeee table when you have the Interactive LED Coffee Table to complement the rest of your digital lifestyle? This unique piece of home furniture features multiple pint-points of light that flock around your fingers - a great function that is guaranteed to keep kids occupied and mesmerized whenever your neighbor brings his clan over for a visit. The Interactive LED Coffee Table relies on analog circuitry and responds to movement above it via 480 superbright white LEDs. They retail for $2,500 a pop - definitely expensive, but a great addition to the living room if you can afford one.

Aerocon

Aerocon, originally uploaded by Avi_Abrams.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Super Phone: Balance Concept Phone Merges Dreams With Renders

In case you can't get enough of real cellphones, designer Bence Bogar has a fake one for you to drool over. The concept, a luxury twist/slide smartphone, combines what we've seen in dual-screen phones wiht crazy expensive features.

Specs: two touchscreens with a third display on the back, sliding body that both slides and flips, 400x240 display at 2.8 inches, 5.1-megapixel camera with auto focus, 2x optical zoom, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, 512MB internal memory and a microSD slot.

It's a pretty neat design for sure, but whether it will work in the real world where phones are dropped and slammed all over the place is anyone's guess. – Jason Chen

Concept Page [Egystudio]

Futuristic Skyscrapers

Futuristic Skyscrapers, originally uploaded by secharoth.

Futuristic Motorcycle

Futuristic Motorcycle, originally uploaded by nc454.

This is the latest in my series of futuristic motorcycles and frankly I think it's the best. I was inspired by artist Arthur Radebaugh (no relation) who was famous for drawing futuristic modes of transportation in the 40's and 50's and so on.

Futuristic eating in the Thai capital

Futuristic eating in the Thai capital, originally uploaded by carlaingeneva.

Thailand

Epoq Video Wristwatch has a thin OLED screen, MP3 playback

You are aware that in the future everyone will be watching TV on their wrists, aren't you? Apparently the future begins here, because this 12-mm-thick Epoq Video Wristwatch can play MPEG-4 and WMA video on its 1.5 inch 128 x 128-pixel screen. Adding to the efficiency of that video are the OLEDs (organic light emitting diodes) that make up its 260K screen, tiny diodes which are a lot thinner, run cooler and use significantly less energy than traditional backlit LCD video displays.

It does more than just play video, too, storing 2 GB of MP3 audio files (a 4-GB model is in the works) on its internal flash memory and packing enough battery power to play those tunes for eight hours on a charge. It even has an FM radio on board, and oh yeah, it also tells you the time of day.

This is a fascinating design exercise using the latest OLED technology, but we're seriously wondering just how pleasurable it would be to watch video for long on a 1.5-inch screen. The cost of finding out is surprisingly low, though: $170. — Charlie White

First to You, via CrunchGear

WebTime Elite Watch lets only the elite know what time it is

Put this EleeNo WebTime Elite watch on your wrist, and no one will ever be able to tell what time it is. Except you, of course, because you know the secret: All you need to do is determine where that colored line in the triangular top window intersects with the numerals. That gives you the hours, and then you do the same with the half circle-shaped window on the bottom to determine the minutes.

Even though its display isn't highly accurate, its movement is, and the company says you'll get a solid four years of battery life because it's so efficient. The $123.33 watch is made out of stainless steel with resin inlays, and it ends up being rather heavy, weighing over 4.5 ounces. It looks solid, though, and its hidden butterfly clasp gives it a clean look all the way around the wristband.

Take a look at a few more angles of this odd watch on the next page.