Zen and the Art of Prop Making

The original TRON movie was an exciting voyage into a virtual word where anything was possible so seeing the title paired with the word "duck" piqued my curiosity. I don't know why but there is something inherently funny about a duck or anything relating to them. I discovered this video ad for duct tape which, if you are familiar with the original TRON , is a witty send up of the classic motorcycle sequence in the movie. The original TRON The movie was originally released in 1982 by Walt Disney Pictures and was directed by Steven Lisberger. It starred Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn in the lead role with Bruce Boxleitner in a dual role of program/user Tron . The movie tells the story of Flynn as he attempts to hack into a major corporations mainframe to prove that they had stolen his work. He gets transported into a virtual digital world as a unique program/User. Here he teams up with Tron, one of his creations, to defeat the Master Control Program, who has been contr

The Waterfall Illusion by Escher, like his other drawings, is a sublime example of 3D illusions drawn in 2D. Some of the images are not so impossible to recreate in real life. A recent example I discovered was his 1961 drawing of a Waterfall Illusion recreated in real life. The illusion only works from one viewpoint but this is necessary with many illusions. How the Waterfall Illusion works While most two-dimensional artists use relative proportions to create an illusion of depth, Escher here and elsewhere uses conflicting proportions to create the visual paradox. The Waterfall Illusion has the structure of a Penrose triangle, an impossible object designed independently by Roger Penrose and Oscar Reutersvärd. Below is a video of a clever model reconstruction of the Waterfall Illusion drawing. Using elements cut in perspective the illusion comes alive when seen from a particular viewpoint. Many Renaissance churches used this single viewpoint idea to achieve fantastic effects o

A quick search on YouTube for Rubik cube robots will illustrate how many people have devoted their time to solving this puzzle. There are robots that look like humans that have been designed to solve the Rubik cube puzzle but they seem clunky and awkward in their operation. They do finally solve the puzzle but none of them do it as quickly as Ruby, the brainchild of students at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. Not only does Ruby solve the Rubik cube puzzle in record time but her design and operation is a beauty to behold. Ruby is also a work of art and a credit to her designers. YouTube Videos of Rubik cube You think Ruby is fast solving the Rubik cube puzzle? It is still not as fast as a human. Below is world champion Feliks Zemdegs solving the Rubic cube puzzle in record time of 6.24 seconds! Will robotics ever achieve the blinding dexterity of the human hand? More Rubik cube videos available on YouTube.

The idea of a mechanised suit that gives a human being super strength is not new. Numerous examples of an exoskeleton suit can be found in movies such as Aliens, Iron Man and, more recently, Avatar and District 9. Most people will appreciate how fanciful such concepts are, particularly with modern advances in CGI technology. A practical exoskeleton suit In a good example of life imitating art, the folks at Raytheon have made some pretty impressive steps in making the concept of an exoskeleton suit a reality. The video below shows a working example of the XOS 2, a tethered exoskeleton suit which gives its human operator super strength.

Rube Goldberg was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer and inventor. He was born in 1883 and died in 1970 and was best known for his cartoons depicting impossibly complicated machines doing very simple tasks. Any device that is designed to do a very simple task in a highly complicated fashion is known as a Rube Goldberg machine . We all remember as kids seeing a room full of dominos falling in patterns after one is knocked over triggering a chain reaction. The same concept was used in another Rube Goldberg machine - the game called Mousetrap where a ball operates an interconnected series of chutes, levers and buttons on the machine. The "OK Go" Rube Goldberg machine I saw this OK Go video for the first time today and the technical aspects of their machine blew me away. This Rube Goldberg machine that the band OK Go built takes the concept and launches it into the stratosphere! Here is the official OK Go video for the recorded version of "This Too Shal

While researching robots I came across a company who has made a mechanical dog robot. They have made some amazing progress in the science of walking machines. The company is called Boston Dynamics and they have developed a four legged mechanical dog called, surprise surprise, Big Dog. Lifelike mechanical dog As you can see in the video this mechanical dog robot appears almost lifelike in it's movements. At one point a guy tries to push the machine over and it recovers itself! Shots of it navigating an icy surface have to be seen to be believed!