#TBT While visiting the York Revolution baseball stadium in York, PA for Wingtock 2014, I spent some time with FIRST Robotics team techfire225, who were engaging kids with their bot, appropriately using it for rubber chicken chucking.

Robotic Extrusions

3D printing method developed by Ji Shi uses robotic arm and biomimicry, where the output form is inspired by the structure of spider web for greater strength:

Most of today’s researches and applications of robotic fabrication are limited to replicating human labor and raising efficiency of manufacturing. However,  in the project of Robotic 6-Axis 3D Printing, we developed a fabrication strategy learning and emulating the law of nature (referring to Chinese philosophy “师法自然 “). By studying the material and structure performance of 3D form in nature, we figured out a way to incorporate biomimetic fabrication strategy into 3D printing process. And by designing the special robotic-end effector (Tooling) and utilizing the great flexibility and accuracy of KUKA robotics, the biomimetic fabricating process has been fully realized.

Adrianne Haslet-Davis dances again for the first time since the Boston terrorist attack last year. 

When the bombs went off at the Boston Marathon finish line, Adrianne Haslet-Davis lost the lower half of her left leg in the explosion. She’s a ballroom dance teacher, and she assumed she would never dance again. With most prosthetics, she wouldn’t.

But Hugh Herr, of the MIT Media Lab, wanted to find a way to help her. He created a bionic limb specifically for dancers, studying the way they move and adapting the limb to fit their motion. (He explains how he did it here.)

At TED2014, Adrianne danced for the first time since the attack, wearing the bionic limb that Hugh created for her.  

Hugh says, “It was 3.5 seconds between the bomb blasts in the Boston terrorist attack. In 3.5 seconds, the criminals and coward took Adrianne off the dance floor. In 200 days, we put her back. We will not be intimidated, brought down, diminished, conquered or stopped by acts of violence.”

Amen to that, Hugh.