Mark Rober, this costume’s proud creator, works as a Mechanical Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Gizmodo reports that he has spent the past 5 years developing hardware for the next Mars Rover, set to launch this Thanksgiving. Clearly he does some pretty amazing things in his spare time, as well. Props to the most creatively engineered costume this year!

Cartoons have come a long way since the hand-drawn moving pictures of decades past. Now, the animated films at your local cineplex are made possible by sophisticated computer software created by engineers. Modeling the realistic textures and movement of such things as fur, hair and fabric, for example, takes serious computing power. Without it, the swashbuckling hero of Puss in Boots would look decidedly less so.

And when a cartoon character looks solid enough to touch, it’s thanks to a 3-D animation software package called Maya, now the industry standard. Clearly, it takes a lot of ingenuity to create characters that virtually pop off the screen.

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What do the blockbuster movie Avatar, high-performance sports gear, the Angry Birds phone app, and pollution-eating bacteria have in common? They are among a host of fascinating innovations developed by engineers and featured in the newest edition of the American Society for Engineering Education’s (ASEE) Engineering, Go For It magazine.

The publication is now available in our online store. You can find a free preview of the magazine here.

The kid-friendly magazine is part of ASEE’s campaign to inspire more K-12 students, particularly young women and underrepresented minorities, to pursue engineering careers. Illustrating how engineers make a difference in the world, the new edition includes:

• Stories featuring robots that imitate animals, Hollywood special effects, clean energy innovations, and technological advances giving athletes a winning edge.
• Engaging profiles on an array of engineering careers and disciplines.
• Fresh, cutting-edge examples of engineering innovations that are transforming fields from aerospace and medical care to architecture and materials science.
• Interviews with eight students currently participating in the Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship sponsored by the Department of Defense and administered by ASEE

In addition to producing a print magazine, eGFI blogs weekly for students and teachers, and can be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Every once in a while, an engineer comes along whose work combines different disciplines in a way that is both fascinating and inspiring. Natalie Jeremijenko is one such engineer. A modern-day Renaissance woman, Jeremijenko challenges traditional approaches to problem solving with such initiatives as zip-lines to speed kids to school or The Environmental Health Clinic, where “im-patients” come in with environmental health concerns and leave with creative prescriptions to help solve these issues:

Making no distinction between science and art, she develops unconventional, even playful projects for museums and educational applications alike.

Jeremijenko’s career path so far has been anything but boring. After completing academic work in a variety of fields, organizing a rock festival, and speaking at the 2010 TED conference, she now serves as an associate professor of visual art at New York University. She has completed graduate and Ph.D.-level work in an astonishing variety of fields, including history, neuroscience, mechanical engineering, computer science, and electrical engineering, and is uniquely skilled at blurring the lines between these disciplines through interactive, experimental art.

In this TED talk she highlights a few of her recent projects:

Her work is described as experimental design, hence xDesign, as it explores opportunities presented by new technologies for social and political change. For example, in 2005 Jeremijenko introduced a pack of environmentally-sensitive, “feral” robotic dogs to various student groups in the NYC area. These toy dogs had been reprogrammed to detect chemical pollutants and then “set loose” in local parks to patrol. Upon sensing contamination, they bark, roll over, and play dead. Other projects of hers include installations of cloned trees in pairs in various urban micro-climates, a statistical index linking the Dow Jones to the suicide rate at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, and interactive interfaces for zoos.

No matter what media and methods are employed, it’s clear that Jeremijenko’s unique marriage of art and engineering is one that will continue to surprise, delight, provoke, and educate a multitude of minds.

Every once in a while, a project comes along that, in addition to bridging the gap between art and science, also manages to leave you completely awestruck. Such is the case with the haunting and surreal underwater sculpture of Jason deCaires Taylor, a Mexico-based artist and scuba diver.

After spending much of his childhood in Malaysia near its famous coral reefs, Taylor developed a profound attachment to the ocean and its diverse inhabitants. He was later inspired to combine his love of the sub-aquatic world with his training in ceramics and stone carving, ultimately producing a series of stunning underwater installations across the globe.

But the beauty of these works goes beyond the aesthetic. Taylor’s statues not only provide scuba divers a type of underwater museum, but also, more importantly, work to restore coral reef growth and local biodiversity.

His latest project, The Silent Evolution, consists of over 400 figures made of a pH-neutral concrete. Placed in the clear waters of Cancun, Mexico, this group of statues will provide a rich environment for marine life to flourish while also easing the pressures of tourist traffic on other local reefs.

Here’s a video of the site, which officially opened November 27th, 2010:

Installing such a large-scale project – The Silent Evolution spans about 4,500 sq feet and weighs an incredible 198 tons – takes a lot of careful coordination and engineering. Sites must be scouted, sand beds leveled, and statues lowered using cranes and other construction equipment. Once they enter the water, flotation bags are attached to the pieces so that they can be precisely maneuvered and placed. This detailed operation takes a total of about 15 people to perform – 10 crew and engineers out of water and 5 divers.

The beginning of this video shows brief parts of the installation process at Isla Mujeres, near Cancun:

After the sculptures have been placed, the works are then propagated with live coral from nearby endangered reefs. Small holes are also drilled into some of the figures to encourage creatures like lobsters and blennies to make a home inside them. To ensure his statues will successfully support sea life, Taylor collaborated with several marine biologists from both Mexico and the U.S. These scientists also helped him choose sites that are most conducive to coral growth.

This video shows the natural changes that have occurred over the past few year at the sites of his sculptures in Granada and the UK, installed in 2007:

Coral reefs, known as the “rainforests of the sea,” are amazingly rich environments that are home to about a quarter of Earth’s marine species. Though scientists have predicted that almost 80% of the world’s coral population will be depleted by the year 2050, projects such as Taylor’s give hope that with hard work and ingenuity, humans may be able to help save these precious ecosystems.

Says Taylor of his art, “You can use sculpture as a way to convey hope, inspiring people to consider their interactions with the natural world and build a sustainable future.” So far, it seems as though his work is doing just that.

Here’s a recent interview with the artist from a British television show:

For more information about saving the world’s coral reefs, please check out the Coral Reef Alliance.

Images courtesy of Jason deCaires Taylor

This brings a whole new meaning to “freeze frame”: a team of engineers in Finland has created the world’s first ice touchscreen.

The device was inspired by the Finnish tradition of building snow and ice sculptures during long winters and built by a team of Nokia researchers. In a New Scientist interview, a team member says of the inspiration for the project: “We decided to see if we could make an ice sculpture that was interactive.”

Turns out they could. The team used a chainsaw to cut a one-ton, 25-centimeter-thick chunk of river ice into multiple 50-centimeter-sqaure slabs. They then created an ice wall out of the blocks and blasted the surface with a heat gun to ensure a smooth surface. The wall became interactive through digital projection technology and rear-diffused illumination (RDI).

A near-infrared light was mounted behind the wall and covered the surface in invisible light. Also behind the wall were near-infrared cameras that focused on the front of the surface.

When a hand is placed on the ice, it reflects light towards cameras, and the signal that the cameras receives helps a nearby computer determine the hand’s position, size, and motion. The computer is also connected to a projector, which uses the data to project colorful imagery onto the ice wall.

The icy design is a playful experiment that demonstrates that interactive computing interfaces can be built just about anywhere.

Images:
New Scientist
User Interface Technology

If you’re planning to visit the western coast of France anytime soon, be sure to keep an eye out for a 40-foot-tall mechanical elephant. Perhaps taking inspiration from steampunk fiction and Jules Verne, French engineers, artists, and craftspeople have cobbled together a movable mammoth using 45 tons worth of reclaimed wood and steel.

The Great Elephant is part of the Machines of the Isle of Nantes project, and exhibit of fantastical creations, which aims to inspire the imaginations of citizens and tourists alike. And it’s not just for decoration, either: this robust creature can carry up to 49 passengers on a 45-minute walk around the city of Nantes.

Here’s a video of some stomping action:

Click here to view the embedded video.

While it’s unclear what sort of fuel the mobile elephant runs on (peanuts?), we’re hoping its carbon footprint is a lot smaller than its actual footprints.

[Inhabitat]

The software, called Lagoa Multiphysics 1.0, was created by Thiago Costa, a programmer and technical director for Ubisoft games. Watch as it realistically simulates falling dirt, crumpling silks, and other animated marvels in the eye-popping demo below:

While these stunning graphics are currently too complex to run in real-time (e.g. during gameplay), they may soon be popping up in video game cut-scenes and in movie theaters near you.

[PopSci]