We’re in the process of starting our own product design house to justify having a machine shop and cool space to call our own. Above is a first pass at a logo!

It’s called Kunga, and it’s just one instance of a larger framework.

I’ve taken the approach that I’ll probably gain more insight from talking to those who extremely knowledgeable about health, but these people seem to be too busy to interview or too far away to meet face to face. Hopefully I’ll have some more success by tomorrow getting face time with people.

Secondarily, I feel a little guilty about taking up people’s time and stealing their insights. If these projects are indeed implemented by Humana somebody is going to make money off them. I’ve effectively taken “Joe, the Fitness Expert’s” knowledge, synthesized it with some other knowledge to come up with a cash cow, and Joe isn’t even going to see a $20 bill for his time. It just seems a little odd to me. I wonder is IDEO pays people that the interview?

“In retrospective, I guess I was a strange child. It was apparent to my parents and their friends that I had a built-in propensity to create things almost from birth. This must be why I was allowed to play with hammers, nails, knives, and soldering irons from a very young age. Unlike most kids who wanted toys, I wanted an arc welder and band saw. Through my childhood I was prone to set up business enterprises, make some money, and then use that money to purchase tools and materials to build stuff. This pattern of enterprise, investment, and creation has been a staple in my life and continues to be a driving force in my everyday existence.

My love of building was driven by necessity. I cannot remember a time when I haven’t had ideas for art, widgets, and other various projects that needed to get out of my head into reality. For the longest of times, the only way that I could express my ideas was to create them in metal, wood, plastic, and stone. As I have grown older I still find myself overcome with an overwhelming need to create the ideas that meander through my head at all times of the day and night. To some extent adult life has made it more difficult to find time to realize my ideas and has forced me to learn different ways to express and test my designs.

In my lifetime I have acquired a myriad of knowledge about the processes and techniques needed to realize my dreams. I’ve worked as a carpenter, electrician, plumber, machinist, welder, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, embedded device designer, software designer, web programmer, jazz musician, artist, entrepreneur and many permutations of the aforementioned careers. I didn’t make some conscious decision to delve into each of these professions, but I just kind of stumbled into them on the necessary path to my dreams.

My journey started sometime around the age of 6 when I started taking art classes. I rapidly took to drawing and sculpting. Around this time I saw a mechanical sculpture, and I wanted to make sculptures that moved and interacted with the people viewing them. Looking back, it was this early encounter with a mechanical sculpture that incited what has now been a 17 year journey into the depths of engineering, art, science, and music.

Growing up I was more interested in learning what I wanted to know, making stuff, playing music, and making art rather than what I was being taught in school. Public schools were not equipped to deal with students like me, and the vast majority of what I learned was gleaned from technical books and experimentation. As a result of my self-directed studies during high school, I was already rather versed in what was being taught in the college engineering curriculum, and thus found myself free to pursue other interests.

My abilities in music and art allowed me to work and play with fine arts majors, my engineering skill allowed me to design and build cool electrical devices, and my entrepreneurial abilities allowed me to leverage my skills to start a small custom design business. One of my favorite pursuits in college was road cycling and racing. My life was forever changed on my 21^st birthday, when I was hit by a car while on a 100 mile bike ride and came within minutes of losing my life due to a severed artery. All of a sudden, I found myself disabled with an almost completely nonfunctional arm. I could no longer play music, produce art, or use my years of skill to produce models of my dreams. During this time I learned to render my thoughts on the computer in three dimensions. Over the last two years, I have defied modern medicine and regained the use of my right arm, but am forever changed.

These days I find myself focusing on the finality of existence, and have come to realize that time is too short to be an artist, an engineer, or a musician. I want to be everything, and combine my knowledge into a life to support myself and my family. During my six month recovery from being run over, I gained a certain amount of clarity about my life. I realized that it wasn’t the act of making things from which I derived most of my enjoyment, but solving the problems involved in producing what I’d thought up. This was a radical realization for me since I had spent so much of my life learning how to realize my ideas in ways that are now difficult with my semi-functional hands.

So, I spent some time and money to build two CNC machines. These machines have completely changed the way I approach design. I now am able to focus on the functionality of the device rather than worrying about the mechanics of manually machining complex forms. I’ve adopted a more rational approach to design where I spend lots of time drawing 3D models on the computer and simulating functionality. I then use my CNC equipment to produce what I’ve carefully designed and simulated.

While I’m happy with what I’ve achieved in my life, I feel as if there is so much more that I can still learn. I may be able to spend another 17 years teaching myself how to design and manufacture products, but who’s to say I will be able to? What I need is a place where I can be immersed in new ideas and techniques to build on a lifetime of design experience. I want to learn how to utilize my god-given talent to design and build to the fullest extent so that I can continue to grow as a human being and to grow my ideas and business dreams.

Engineering has always been an art form to me. Even when I design something as technical as a circuit board, I aim to make it beautiful. There is something about the layout of components and copper traces that is wholly creative. An entity like a circuit board may end up working fine if it’s ugly, but things just seems to work better when they have a certain amount of beauty in their design. Fellow engineers often have trouble with this concept, and do not understand my position that there can be beauty in any form.”

Figure 1, the first prototypes

The first set of prototypes we created were based on the idea of using a tensioned fabric panels, like sun shades used by photographers, to create a structure. We figured out a way to create a circular tensioned structure and an elliptical tensioned structure. Then, I sewed them together and we ended up with a simple self deploying structure. We went through at least 8 simple fabric prototypes before we got to the basic structure in figure 2.

Figure 2, First working sunshade like tent

The nice thing about the sunshade type structure is that it can be collapsed into a flat pack, ¼ the size of the deployed unit. Accordingly, our sunshade like tent was able to be collapsed into a flat pack, ¼ the size of the base of the tent.

Figure 3, the collapsed version of Fig. 2

Our first prototypes looked like tents, which was not the intent of the project. However, we presented them on Wednesday during class, and the only comment that stuck out was, “Why aren’t they rigid?”

So I started thinking about how to make the sunshade type things rigid. On Thursday I had an idea: I figured that the sunshade like spring mechanism could be used to deploy a clamshell ring-thing structure. In short order I prototyped the clamshell mechanism with some wire and a springy piece of carbon fiber rod, and it worked well. Paul and other loft peoples liked the idea.

Figure 4, Clamshell prototype

We later realized that the rigid brass rod connecting the two sides of the structure could be removed and allow the structure to be collapsed further.

Figure 5, Collapsed Structure, less brass connecting rod

I tried to capture a time lapse of the structure opening, because the mechanism is pretty elegant…

Figure 6, Opening time-lapse

With a pretty decent mechanism in hand, we moved on to trying to come up with some final dimensions for a full sized structure so that we could size our 1/5 scale model. We masked out some area in the small loft then attempted to build a structure of junk and fabric around a full size footprint.

Figure 7, Mockup montage

After playing around, we figured that a 10 foot wide base and 6.5 foot high ceiling would be comfortable. We then started to work on a final model. We decided to try to make some folding rigid structures with one of the first models and some card board.

Figure 8, rigid fabric test

It’s not the greatest idea, but it seems to work pretty well.

Figure 9, folding the semi-rigid structur

Finally, we began work on the final structure

Figure 10, working on the final structure

Background:

Digital photos have allowed us photographic freedom. Not that long ago, a photo was a multi-step, expensive process. An analog photographer would shoot film, have the film the developed, make prints from the negatives, sort through the prints to figure out which prints were good and which were bad, and then the photographer would mount the photos in albums or create some other method of display. A photograph used to take time.

We are now able to readily capture photos digitally. However, the transformation of our visual memories from analog to the digital realm has come at a cost. A digital photo is no different than any other piece of digital information. It’s stored the same, looks the same to the computer, and is manipulated the same way as another piece of data stored on a computer.

The computer’s treatment of digital imagery directly contrasts how we treat our analog photos. Analog photo’s are coveted and treasured. When people’s homes are about to be destroyed you see them fleeing with arms full of photo albums, not hard drives.

Intent:

It’s not realistic to believe that digital photo’s can be stored in such a way that the computer treats them like we treat our analog photos. However, there seems to be an obvious way that will create a difference in the way that we manipulate photos on the computer; a novel human computer interface device. My idea was to create a photo cube that would allow a user to manipulate and display photos. This idea was inspired by the little plastic cubes that you can display six analog photos with.     

Functionality:

I wanted to create a device that would allow the user to manipulate a digital photo cube without having to touch the computer. 

1.      This digital cube needed to be wireless to break the connection between manipulating digital photos and working on other documents on the computer.

2.      Moving the box in the real world should move the box in the digital realm

3.      Each side of the box should display a photo

4.      Photo’s can be added to a given side on the digital box by giving the box positive reinforcement, like petting

5.      Photo’s that aren’t liked can be removed from a side of the box by shaking the box

6.      Once six photos have been selected, the box can be saved off and viewed later

Implementation:

The cube was realized in the form of a black box. This black box contains an inertial measurement device and Bluetooth link. These devices allow the box to sense its orientation and rotation and connect to a laptop wirelessly.  A simple application was written in to implement items 1, 2, 3, and 5 from the functionality list. The end result was a fairly complete prototype that kind of worked.

Some Video:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/goligorsky/2896596439/