#re.work

Session 5 Our Environment: Hacking and Reshaping a Sustainable Future

Speaker 1 Tumbleweed against desertification

One of the biggest problems of humanity is desertification. About 40% of land is dry land and almost 25% of the population live there. One of the challenges for improving the situation is to have more information (humidity, temperature, wind, etc.) about desertification. Shlomi Mir showed his idea: the tumbleweed. It is a sphere which can either move just with the power of wind or can stop moving by flattening. Combined with gps and few sensors it can collect data from different position automatically. At the same time it could seed plans autonomously. This could be a huge step to understand desertification.

Speaker 2 Bio-inspired robotics

Robotics have always animals or humans as inspiration. The Center of BioMicro-Robotics attempt to build a robot inspired by plants. So it´s kind of a root which spreads. It has also sensors – the idea is that it could move like a root. One example is the biomedical endoscopic robotic solution.

Session 6 Panel: The Internet of Things – Smart Interconnected World

This was a talk about the Internet of Things. My conclusion:

It´s already possible to connect a lot of things: TV, Phone, PC, refrigerator, etc.. So it´s just the question of time.

The biggest advantage is operational efficiency

So the first industries which are/could be affected are logistics especially supply chain management.

Session 7 Future Breakthroughs in Energy Storage & Production

Speaker 1 Photovoltaik more efficient

Rawlemon optimizes the efficiency of photovoltaik. It is a glass sphere which focuses the light. A construction automatically moves a panel to the focus point. Therefore it increases the energy earnings of a solar panel tremendously. The project succeeded a crowdfunding campaign with over 200.000 $ on Indiegogo.

Speaker 2 Computer unplugged

Can we operate a computer without spending energy? I was stunned as I heard this question. The critical factor in energy consumption of a computer is the processor in particular the heat development of transistors. At the moment everybody just cool down the processor – so it also costs energy to cool them down. The University of Perugia a switch (transistor) without heating. I cannot explain how they are doing that but they mentioned these sites. Maybe it helps you to understand.

http://www.ict-energy.eu/node/1

http://nipslab.org/

http://zero-power.eu/

Session 8 Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

2 speakers

Machine learning and artificial intelligence has many important applications – personalized advertisement, music recommendations, personalized products or newsfeeds or face recognition are just a few. The real challenge is that you have to analyze the right data – so smart data instead of big data. There are also a lot of open tools that help you to start with machine learning or even open prediction services. The pictures below show some of them.

Session 9 Smart, Future, Imagined Cities

Speaker 1

This was a speech about technology in our lives and what are boundaries of privacy and information. So it was kind of an imagination in how technology influences our lives in future days.

Speaker 2

Elegant embellishments are building materials that could clean the air. So they use a salt surface which reacts with polluted air. One of their are buildings are already placed in Mexico City. The picture below shows the building.

(source: http://www.formakers.eu/project-762-elegant-embellishments-depolluting-quasicrystal-facade)

Thanks to the Speakers: (all speakers here) Session 5 Shlomi Mir, Senior Designer, Israel National Museum of Science @shlomimir Barbara Mazzolai, Director, Center for Micro-BioRobotics

Session 6 Josef Brunner, Chief Architect for IoT and Energy, Cisco @josefbrunner Mitko, CTO, IoE Centre of Innovation Berlin, Cisco Systems @IoTCol MODERATOR: Martin Spindler, Co-Founder, Internet of People @mjays

Session 7 Andre Broessel, Director, Rawlemon Solar Architecture @rawlemon1 Luca Gammaitoni, Professor of Physics, University of Perugia MODERATOR: Martin Spindler, Co-Founder, Internet of People @mjays

Session 8 Jake Mannix, Applied Machine Learning Engineer, Twitter @prane Andreas Müller, Machine Learning Scientist, Amazon @t3kcit MODERATOR: Mitko Vasilev, CTO, IoE Centre of Innovation Berlin, Cisco Systems @loTCol

(Most of these topics are new to me – please comment if I´m writing something wrong. ;-) ) 

Session 1 Big Data & Healthcare

Can you imagine predicting an epidemic through analyzing social media? I couldn´t. But that´s what the University of London tried. Looking back they collected about 3 million tweets between May 2009 and March 2010. After analysis they could anticipate swine flu one week earlier than medical institutions did. Of course there are a lot of challenges heading their way like cross-correlation or data access. But I think if it could help preparing just one day earlier it would be a huge improvement.

  Session 2 Smart Wearable Robots

The BioEngineering Group attempted to build exoskeletons for humans. One of the prototypes for a leg exoskeleton seems to work very fine. To face problems like velocity and forces as well as seamless interaction with the human body and movement prediction they use artificial intelligence/machine learning based on brain research. There are a lot of applications for exoskeletons like for medical purposes.

  Session 3 Robotics: The New Revolution

Speaker 1 – Robotic + Origami = Robogami

The idea of a material that can change its appearance is the aim for Reconfigurable Robotics Labs. Because the real world is very low predictable there´s a need for materials that can change their appearence depending on the situation. The approach of Jamie Paik was to build a surface out of triangles which can be folded. The result can be converted into almost every shape.

Speaker 2 – Autonomous Cars

I think almost everybody heard of the autonomous car of google which is driving itself. But I didn´t hear about an autonomous car project of Freie Universität Berlin. Surprisingly the results of their autonomous car are amazing. The car could drive itself from one of berlins airport to the centre of the city. (Of course there was a driver who could intervene.) The technology is very sophisticated – so the car could also drive in Mexico City, which is quiet impressive! But not just driving around was a challenge – they also achieved smooth driving and driving on a parking lot. Paul Rojas can imagine that cars will drive autonomously on highways in 2020 and on every street in more than 20 years.

Speaker 3 – Waste sorting robot

ZenRobotics wants to fight the waste problem. They developed a robot to sort the waste. The real challenge is that waste could possibly have every shape and could be broken or cut or have other deformation.

  Session 4 Smart Materials Disrupting Society

Speaker 1 – Self-healing materials

One approach to create self-healing materials followed the Delft University of Technology. They developed asphalt that could be easily repaired. Asphalt consists of stones and bitumen (kind of a glue). Before asphalt breaks and has a lot of holes it starts with microcracks. That means that bitumen doesn´t stick with the stones anymore. To repair broken areas they mixed asphalt with stellwhool. Now they have the possibility to induce and therefore heat up the bitumen to liquid state. So it flows to broken places again and fixes the microcracks. The result is that if asphalt is heated up every 3-4 years the lifetime could potentially doubled. That´s not just cheaper but far better for ressources! 

Speaker 2 – Dream of engineers: light and strong material

Usually you have materials that are light and weak or heavy and strong. The dream of engineers is a material which is light and strong. So Karlsruhe Institute of Technology was trying to develop such a material. The approach was a good material architecture – they combined a polymere structure with a ceramic coat. The results are amazing: They really could build such a material. The next challenge is to produce these structures in a larger size.

  Thanks to the Speakers: (all speakers here)

Session 1

Patty Kostkova, Special Lecturer, City University London @pattykostkova

Session 2

Juan Moreno, Research Professor, BioEngineering Group @juan_c_moreno

Session 3

Jamie Paik, Director of Reconfigurable Robotics Lab, EPFL @robotician

Raul Rojas, Professor of Computer Science, Freie Universität Berlin @FreieUniBerlin Tuomas Lukka, Chief Scientist, ZenRobotics @zenrobotics

MODERATOR: Robert Thielicke, Editor in Chief, Technology Review @RobertThielicke 

Session 4