Our coaches David Quinn and Daniel Wiesmann have been working hard the past few weeks on developing a software tool that maps out energy production and consumption for cities. The software was developed using Netlogo, a simple programing language that was initially developed at the Media Lab, MIT. As you can see from the setup, a camera takes a picture of differently colored maps. Each color encodes a particular property like building height, green space, solar cells, etc. Based on these metrics, the software then instantly produces an analysis of the city.

Here is the interface of the software:

Images and the analysis can be easily imported to Google Earth.

On Saturday, we had our first

Getting to know how sensors work by playing some games powered by the Kinect

Teams brainstorming ideas for their sensor-based projects

Students filming their commercials for their designed products

The whole group at the end of the challenge

Today we headed to MIT to shoot some film using the steady wings we built yesterday. The exercise was to create a portrait of MIT that involves building and movement. Here is Vanessa filming the LIST gallery curator Joao Ribas



And here is one of the shots at MIT. It is the MIT legendary lobby 7

This Saturday, January 8 there will be a special event showcasing NuVu, the educational program developed in partnership with doctoral students and professors from MIT and Harvard, taking place at Beaver Country Day School.



NuVu is an innovation center for middle and high school students whose pedagogy is based on the studio model and geared around multi-disciplinary, collaborative projects. NuVu nurtures creative problem solving, collaboration, and presentation skills, all critical for student success. The NuVu program has been piloted and launched in partnership with Beaver Country Day School. Already in operation for 6 months, we are ecstatic with the results and with the very unique opportunity our students have to work on a daily basis with PhD's from MIT and Harvard as well as other experts from a diverse range of fields. Conceived as a magnet innovation center, NuVu is giving students the opportunity to work collaboratively with other students and PhD's on the campus of MIT. This special event will include a session focused on exploring how the NuVu program can be applied to your schools--with highlights from Beaver's experience integrating NuVu into the existing curriculum.

Day 4 of Genius Camp was an intensive workshop on how to use Adobe Photoshop to collage and compose images. The students worked in teams to first learn the basic tools and functionality of the graphics editing program. Then they worked on creating Sci-Fi movie posters based on their photographs from the Photography Workshop earlier in the week. Throughout the day, the teams of students learned to work with the .PSD (Photoshop Document) format (Photoshop's native format) that stores an image with many imaging options available to change and manipulate. These include layers with masks, color spaces, transparency, text, clipping paths, and duotone settings. Here are some of the amazing Sci-Fi movie posters created by the teams!

Registration is open for the Fall Trimester at NuVu! Send an email to NuVu@nuvustudio.org for more details on signing up for the academic school year or a trimester.

During the fall term, NuVu students will explore the notion of MOBILITY in its broadest sense. They will build telepresence robots, electric cars and bikes, and prosthetics. They will imagine what the future of urban mobility would look like. 

Have you wondered what the future of cars is going to be? Will we be all using small airplanes to move between places? Would fast trains become the de facto means of transportation? Despite being an amazing mobility device, why did the Segway fail to gain the traction everybody thought it would? Does that reflect a failure on behalf of cities to adapt to new means of transportation? What is all the rave about Tesla electric cars? How did it reach the size of a half GM?

Students will learn the answers to these questions at NuVu. Please register via email to NuVu@nuvustudio.org

We had a very eventful and exciting day. As part of the "Alternative Energy" studio, we visited a few of MIT energy-related programs. We started by visiting the CO-GENENERATION plant, then we talked with Nick Gayeski, a PhD in Building Technology about his research. we capped the day by visiting the Fusion Center.

The combustion turbine

Very complicated inside!

The control room

We spent the next hour at Nick's lab talking about his dissertation research on low-lift cooling technologies. His research is done in collaboration with MASDAR, a new city in Abu Dhabi that will rely entirely on solar energy and other renewable energy sources, with a sustainable, zero-carbon, zero-waste ecology. Nick's research focuses on the consumption side. Since the climate in Abu Dhabi is very hot, most of the energy goes into cooling the buildings. As his research indicates, the potential of low-lift cooling savings is as much as 75% of cooling energy. To achieve this, Nick is using multiple technologies, such as variable speed chiller, radiant cooling, monitoring with system identification, and optimal predictive control.

For the afternoon session, we visited the

The crane that is used to take apart the reactor before every experiment

The heavy door that separates the reactor from the rest of the building

The monitor room

What would you be wearing while flying through the air, 10,000 feet above ground, or while striding down the street imagining you were flying high in the sky? Students in the

Design-Build Team: Kayla Guzovsky, Valerian Planche, Anthony Richardson, and Jay Rodman This project was presented as an opportunity to use the Arduino programming systems to make a dancing robot. My group agreed upon a Turtle as the character for our robot. At first, we had very imaginative ideas that included the turtle having a grappling head to help it climb walls, the ability to do acrobatic stunts, have lasers for eyes, and dance to music that it would play from speakers attached to its shell. Part of our project's description was to have our robot be interactive. For this part of the project we imagined the turtle being able to react to having music play, people's touch, and its orientation (being upside-down or right-side-up). We were planning on making a very realistic replica of a sea turtle for our general model that would move around on wheels. In reality our turtle moved its arms and legs in and out to execute dance moves while also shaking/wagging its head and tail back and forth. We wanted it to be a happy, friendly turtle. Its motions would work to express these characteristics. The turtle was made out of clear polycarbonate plastic. We used the foam prototype shell we constructed as a mold to place hexagonal and diamond shaped plastic cut outs to make the outer shell of the turtle. This plastic was used for the base, the four legs, the head, and the tail. To give the turtle motion we attached each limb to its own servo motor to allow each one to be retracted and pushed out individually. This required programming the proper angles using the Arduino so that the limbs pushed all the way out and pulled all the way in, but did not exceed the space limitations. All the motherboards were placed within the shell so space was an issue that we had to be conscious of while designing all the moving parts. All of this was powered by an external power system so that we did not need the turtle to remain attached to the computer. This was not the same for the dozens of LED lights that we attached in the limbs, shell, and eyes of the turtle; a battery powered these lights. For our group, timing was our biggest problem. We spent too much time making a prototype that never actually worked before starting on the final project. By Kayla Guzovsky

Project by: Alonso Richardson and Philip Skipitaris Studio:

Another idea we had for Omanhenes storytelling campaign was re-designing the information brochure for Omanhene. Instead of keeping to the format of a small traditional information brochure that people generally dont read, we decided to replace this with a small passport-like book that displays all the steps that are taken to make chocolate. For the descriptive parts, we decided to use lyrical rap to explain the steps in the chocolate production cycle instead of basic descriptive sentences. This would create a fun, musical twist that may be appealing while being educational for a younger audience.

It was difficult to come up with an idea to display the "Direct from Ghana" approach because cost was a key issue. We didnt have a large, million dollar budget, especially considering that we would not make profits anywhere close to that amount, so we had to be creative in our approach. The Direct From Ghana Approach would help Omanhene spread their story in a cost-effective and interesting manner. Currently neither the Omanhene website nor the brochure tell the story in a way that a 15- or 16-year old kid would even consider reading it. Our approach would make it very easy for someone to visually see that the chocolate comes directly from Ghana. The crate-like box that we designed with its raw wood look and feel conveys the idea to the customer that the chocolate comes directly from Ghana.