THE CYBORG BEETLE

I've been interested in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) ever since I did some work at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Mesa, Arizona, where one of the programs was the development of the Predator drone. These pilotless aircraft are flown in dangerous reconnaissance and strike missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan while controlled remotely thousands of miles away. I've always been fascinated by the technology, and wondered what kind of peaceful applications could be possible.

A class of UAVs, called Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) has been in the news recently. These are tiny aircraft that are being developed to observe hazardous situations that are inaccessible to ground vehicles. Because of the small sizes involved with these machines (some having as little as 15cm wingspans!) one of the challenges with MAVs has been aerodynamic stability. Bird and insect flight has been an inspiration for engineers trying to overcome this, but practical limitations continue to exist.

One bizarre but fascinating variation on MAV development is the "Cyborg Beetle". In this approach (pictured above), various components are deployed directly onto a host insect (a green june beetle, in this case) to in effect "hijack" the insect. A piezoelectric energy harvester converts energy from wing movements to power sensory instruments like cameras and microphones. Additional electricity is gathered from thin-film solar cells as well as a thermoelectric energy harvester which taps the insects body heat. A neural implant allows a human "pilot" to control the insects flight. One could imagine a swarm of these being released into a mine disaster or earthquake relief situation, their tiny sensors relaying information from areas inaccessible to relief workers.

I thought the blending of organic and electrical components in this amazing, yet vaguely disturbing technology would make an interesting technical illustration. Let me know what you think of the rendering, the cyborg beetle technology, or MAVs in general!

IN SEARCH OF CUSTOMER SERVICE

Unlike my father, who could not only fix a toaster but managed to construct an airplane in our garage, I'm not much of a handyman. For a technical illustrator who likes to draw mechanical subject matter, I've never been particularly excited about learning how to hang sheet rock or replace the rear struts on the family mini-van. I'm okay with this personality quirk, but unfortunately for me I've had to hire the occasional contractor to get some larger projects completed, and my experiences with these hired hands have varied. I've been relatively lucky with the quality of work these people have executed around the house over the years, but this hasn't always been true for the quality of customer service I've received. I'm beginning to wonder if the inability to be courteous, return phone calls, or show up for work at a given time is a character trait common with contractors, or is there something else going on. You'd think that with the economy in the state that it's in, good customer service would be the least thing a business would provide in order to stand out in today's competitive marketplace.

Recently, I heard what sounded like a gunshot in the middle of the night. After determining that the house wasn't under attack, I discovered that one of the torsion springs on my overhead garage doors had snapped. After doing a little research online, I decided that the fix wasn't too complicated but the time required to do it might not be worth the money saved, and more importantly I didn't want any more "gunfire" waking the kids if I didn't do the installation correctly. I had to find a contractor to do the work.

After making about ten phone calls and getting only three responses to my inquiry I finally arranged to meet with someone. When this person arrived, he could barely look me straight in the eye or listen to what I had to say. He wouldn't provide a quote, and instead offered to "try some springs out" to see if they would work. After I insisted on talking price before any work began, he suddenly threw up his hands, said "I'm outta here!" and stormed away, muttering something about having "thousands of jobs" and "I have no time for this". I was left there with my mouth (and garage door) open, trying to imagine how anyone with such poor interpersonal skills could manage to run a business.

I ended up getting the job done with someone who provided a reasonable quote and completed the work in an efficient manner. I made a point of telling him that I'd recommend him to anyone who asked, and he seemed to greatly appreciate this.

This is how it's supposed to work, isn't it? Sometimes I wonder. Feel free to share any interesting customer service horror stories you have. They can be pretty entertaining.

HOW STUFF WORKS: CHOCOLATE, WHISKEY & GAMES

This is another recent project for Discovery Channel. The popular "How Stuff Works" series required a set of three illustrations for their volume 2 DVD packaging. Among the subjects covered this time around were chocolate, whiskey, and games; very different but interesting subjects to render in 3D. As a technical illustrator, I'm usually drawing hard-surfaced, mechanical subject matter, so the organic nature of the "Whiskey" and "Chocolate" images made them particularly fun and challenging to create. See the cover layout here.

VISITORS GUIDE MAP

This is a visitors guide map I recently created for the Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston. What started out as a rather complex, 4-story building got simplified to include only the most necessary visitor locations, and I think the resulting image was the better for it. I opted to use a custom perspective view, which will help visitors to quickly orient themselves in the library space. The challenge in using this approach versus a two-dimensional view is being mindful to not obscure key elements with walls and other structures, although sometimes this was unavoidable and I had to selectively "ghost" or cut away a few sections of walls.

A couple handy utilities I used to produce this image were HotDoor's CadTools, which helped me create the custom isometric projection, and VectorScribe, a new suite of tools that speed up the editing and creation of vector artwork. If you're a technical illustrator or create vector graphics I think these tools are indispensable. I look forward to using both of them in future projects. (Click image for full view)

HOW TO CREATE CURVES IN MODO

One of the challenges with 3D software is generating a curved object, or bending existing geometry, as there are a variety of simple yet different approaches depending on the situation. I decided to create a short video that summarizes some different techniques for beginner and intermediate users of modo.