Absolutely. I'm in charge of the mech-e related stuff for a robot comptetition at my school this winter (called MASlab - Mobile Autonomous Systems Lab). We need some custom made parts, like wheel hubs and small aluminum cpu cases, and we're considering using this site for them rather than putting in many hours in the machine shop making 20-40 parts ourselves. I've already played around with the software, and compared with other CAD and CAM software out there, the learning curve is almost negligible. If it lives up to its promise, this tool will basically be a godsend for us.
Hey, everyone,
This is Aaron from the iQuarium project. After reading the Wired article, I'd like to clear something up. The above poster is right, but there's more. The article didn't explicitly mention the most important aspect of the project, which is that our tank will actually display the fluid flow around the swimming fish as they swim. We'll use tiny particles that act like they're suspended in the water, and they will swirl into vortices behind the fish, so you can see how they are more efficient. The vortices a fish uses to swim are not created by its tailfin, they're caused by the sinusoidal motion of its body. Computing the fluid flow requires solving the Navier-Stokes equations, and THAT's what takes so much computation time. (We're getting help on that part from Qiang Zhu and Yuming Liu, two post-doctoral research engineers)
Anyway, I've never seen a fish screensaver that displays the dynamic fluid velocity around the fish. Also, the fish will be able to react to the movement of people (or anything) in the hall, thanks to a ceiling mounted webcam and some simple computer vision. Finally, we're not planning on spending quite that much on a display if at all possible. We'd like to get a company to donate one in exchange for publicity. I guess that's all. If you've got any questions, post here and Katie, Audrey, or I will try to answer.
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Absolutely. I'm in charge of the mech-e related stuff for a robot comptetition at my school this winter (called MASlab - Mobile Autonomous Systems Lab). We need some custom made parts, like wheel hubs and small aluminum cpu cases, and we're considering using this site for them rather than putting in many hours in the machine shop making 20-40 parts ourselves. I've already played around with the software, and compared with other CAD and CAM software out there, the learning curve is almost negligible. If it lives up to its promise, this tool will basically be a godsend for us.
Anyway, I've never seen a fish screensaver that displays the dynamic fluid velocity around the fish. Also, the fish will be able to react to the movement of people (or anything) in the hall, thanks to a ceiling mounted webcam and some simple computer vision. Finally, we're not planning on spending quite that much on a display if at all possible. We'd like to get a company to donate one in exchange for publicity. I guess that's all. If you've got any questions, post here and Katie, Audrey, or I will try to answer.