04 PM | 25 Jul

The birth of #biohybrid beings, part #animal, part #robot [#geekgirl]

This robot ray is the most successful artificial animal yet!

The soft rubber body of the #robot ray is made with a 3-D-printed gold skeleton so thin it functions like cartilage. Geneticists adapted rat heart cells so they could respond to light by contracting. Then, they were grown in a carefully arranged pattern on the rubber and around the gold skeleton. Watch the video.

The birth of biohybrid beings

The new engineered animal responds to light so well scientists were able to guide it through an obstacle course 15 times its length using strong and weak light pulses.

The study authors write, “Our ray outperformed existing locomotive biohybrid systems in terms of speed, distance traveled, and durability (six days), demonstrating the potential of self-propelled, phototactically activated tissue-engineered robots.”

What biohybrid mean for robots and artificial intelligence

Science of this type is fundamental for engineering special-purpose creations such as artificial worms that sniff out and eat cancer. Or bionic body parts for those who have suffered accidents or disease. Imagine having little swimmers in your system that rush to the site of a medical emergency such as a stroke. The promise of sensor-rich soft tissue frees robots to move more easily and yet not be cut off from needed input. Sensitized robot soft tissue could perform without the energy-sucking heaviness of metal or the artificial barrier of hard-plastic exoskeletons.

Source: Inc

05 PM | 31 May

L’Oreal’s Plan to 3-D Print #Human #Skin [#geekgirl]

lab_l'oreal

L’OREAL MAKES COSMETICS AND hair color. It also makes skin. Human skin, created in a lab, so it can test its products without using people or animals. Now it’s talking about printing the stuff, using 3-D bioprinters that will spit out dollops of skin into nickel-sized petri dishes.

The idea is to produce skin more quickly and easily using what is essentially an assembly line developed with Organovo, a San Diego bioprinting company. Such a technique would allow the French cosmetics company to do more accurate testing, but it also has medical applications—particularly in burn care.

Treating severe burns typically involves grafting a healthy patch of skin taken from elsewhere on the body. But large burns present a problem. That has researchers at Wake Forest experimenting with a treatment method that involves applying a small number of healthy skin cells onto the injury and letting them grow organically over the wound. 3-D-bioprinted skin potentially could be produced faster, provided Organovo can successfully replicate the cell structure of human epidermis.

Source and full article: Wired.

05 PM | 23 May

Mat Collishaw’s Insane #3D printed #Zoetrope [#geekgirl]

UK artist Mat Collishaw teams with fellow Londoner Sebastian Burdon (who handled the 3D modeling and animation) to create a mesmerizing and impossibly detailed 3D-printed zoetrope composed of over 350 character figures plus props and environmental elements.

Based on Peter Paul Rubens’ early 17th century painting “Massacre of the innocent,” the project took six months to complete.

Source: STASH

06 PM | 02 May

The #3D #Additivist #Cookbook :: Submissions #manifesto #additivism [#geekgirl]

The 3D Additivist Cookbook :: Call for submissions in any form

Submissions due by 31 May 2015 for online and print publication

The 3D Printer is a metaphor for these weirdest of times: a technology with the capacity to channel creative endeavour, through digital processes, into the reformation of raw matter excavated from ancient geological eras.

Additivism is a proposed new movement in technological and artistic activism that contends with these concerns. The 3D Additivist Manifesto and Cookbook is a project that blurs the boundaries between art, engineering, science fiction, and digital aesthetics. The Manifesto calls for artists, activists, designers, scientists and critical engineers to accelerate the 3D printer and other Additivist technologies to their absolute limits and beyond into the realm of the speculative, the provocative and the weird.

http://additivism.org/cookbook