DIY LED
23. März 2010
diy led via make blog
32nm
23. März 2010
via wired
Crystal Oscillator
23. März 2010
Negative resistance oscillator based on iron pyrite crystals. link
Heinz von Förster: Perception of the future and the future of perception
11. Dezember 2008
“if we can’t perceive,
we can’t perceive of the future
and thus, we don’t know how to act now.”
Génesis Robert Fludd
11. Dezember 2008
“Utriusque Cosmi maioris salicet et minoris metaphysica”
Robert Fludd Oppenheim 1617 Genesis of Robert Fludd
Pictures of Robert Fludd Génesis on flickr
Polynesian Stick Charts
11. Dezember 2008
More on Polynesian Stick Charts
Ars Memorativa (Art of Memory)
9. November 2008
Graphical memory devices from the works of Giordano Bruno
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_memory
Williams-tube
4. Juli 2008
A Williams-tube is another binary storage device.
Ferrit Core Memory
4. Juli 2008
Core Memory is an early form of random-access-memory (ram). A bit is stored in the palarity of an ferrit core ring. Core Memory is unaffected by EMP and radiation and was used in fighter aircrafts, as well as spacecrafts. For example, the Space Shuttle flight computers initially used core memory, which preserved the contents of memory even through the Challenger’s explosion and subsequent plunge into the sea in 1986. (from Wikipedia)
http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/comp_mem_nat_life/
http://www.science.uva.nl/museum/CoreMemory.html
some descriptions:
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/navy-core-memory-desc.html
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/coremem/index.html
molecubes.org: modular robots
21. April 2008
Molecubes For Everyone evolved from the molecubes project from Victor Zykov, Andrew Chan and Hod Lipson.
molecubes.org
Implementation of John von Neumann’s Universal Constructor
21. April 2008
Umberto Pesavento and Renato Nobili did an implementation of John von Neumann’s Universal Construtor. The Universal Constructor is based on cellular automaton which is able to generate a copy of itself. The picture show’s a half copied automaton.
From Umberto Pesavento paper: “Self-reproduction is achieved as a special case of construction by a universal constructor. The theoretical proof of the existence of such machines was given by John von Neumann in the early 1950s [6], but was first implemented in 1994, by the author in collaboration with R. Nobili. Our implementation relies on an extension of the state-transition rule of von Neumann’s original cellular automaton. This extension was introduced to simplify the design of the constructor. The main operations in our constructor can be mapped into operations of von Neumann’s machine.”
Von Neumann, Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata
Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines
21. April 2008
“Kinematic Self-Replication Machines” from Robert A. Freitas Jr. and Ralph C. Merkle is a very good introduction into the topic of mechanical (macroscale, microscale and molecular) self-replicating machines
The complete book as html is online at:
http://www.molecularassembler.com/KSRM.htm
Ben Hopson: Kinetic experiments
21. April 2008
Kinetic experiments on movement by Ben Hopson
molecubes: self-reproducing celluar robot
19. April 2008
from Viktor Zykov, Efstathios Mytilinaios, Bryant Adams, Hod Lipson at the Cornell Computational
Synthesis Lab (CCSL):
“Self-replication is a fundamental property of many interesting physical, formal and biological systems, such as crystals, waves, automata, and especially forms of natural and artificial life. Despite its importance to many phenomena, self-replication has not been consistently defined or quantified in a rigorous, universal way, nor has it been demonstrated systematically in physical artificial systems. Our research focuses both on a new information-theoretic understanding of self-replication phenomena, and the design and implementation of scalable physical robotic systems where various forms of artificial self replication can occur. Our goal is twofold: To understand principles of self-replication in nature, and to explore the use of these principles to design more robust, self-sustaining and adaptive machines.”
http://ccsl.mae.cornell.edu/research/selfrep