When you hear the cry of “Man Overboard!” on a ship, it’s an emergency situation. The sea is unkind to those that fall from their vessel, and survival is never guaranteed—even in the most favorable conditions. Raging swell and the dark of night can only make rescue more impossible.
Over the centuries, naval tradition has included techniques to find and recover the person in the water as quickly and safely as possible. These days, though, technology is playing an ever-greater role in such circumstances. Modern man-overboard (MOB) systems are designed to give crews of modern vessels a fighting chance when rescuing those in peril.
Once upon a time, a computer could tell you virtually nothing about an image beyond its file format, size, and color palette. These days, powerful image recognition systems are a part of our everyday lives. They See Your Photos is a simple website that shows you just how much these systems can interpret from a regular photo.
The website simply takes your image submission, runs it through the Google Vision API, and spits back out a description of the image. I tried it out with a photograph of myself, and was pretty impressed with what the vision model saw:
The ease of integrating bendy parts into designs is one of 3D printing’s strengths. A great example of this is [uhltimate]’s six-shot blaster which integrates several compliant mechanisms. The main blaster even prints in one piece, so there’s not even any assembly required.
The ergonomics are unconventional, but the design is pretty clever.
The blaster itself has three main parts: the trigger, the sear, and the striker. Each of them rely on compliant mechanisms in order to function. The user pulls back the trigger, which hooks into and pulls back the striker. When the trigger is pulled back far enough, the sear releases the striker. This zips forward and slams into a waiting projectile, sending it flying.
The other interesting part is the projectiles and magazine in which they sit. The magazine fits onto the front of the blaster and pulling the trigger allows the magazine to drop down, putting the next projectile into firing position. After the final round is fired, the empty magazine falls away. It’s a pretty clever design, even if the ergonomics are a little unusual and it relies on gravity in order to feed. Tilt it too far sideways or upside down, and it won’t load properly.
