Amazon’s Zoox, the World’s First Purpose-Designed Robotaxi, Launches

Amazon has finally launched Zoox, their public robotaxi service, in Las Vegas.

Their vehicle is the world’s first purpose-designed robotaxi; competitor Waymo, which currently operates in Phoenix, San Francisco, L.A., Atlanta and Austin, uses retrofitted Jaguar I-Paces and Chrysler Pacifica minivans. In contrast the Zoox vehicle was designed by an in-house team, led by industrial designer Nahuel Battaglia.

“The idea for Zoox was never to make a car drive itself; it was about creating an entirely new mode of transportation,” says Jesse Levinson, Zoox Co-Founder and CTO.

Because the vehicle was designed from the ground-up, it frees riders from the cognitive dissonance that comes with seeing an unattended driver’s seat and the steering wheel turning by itself. There is no driver’s compartment at all. The vehicle resembles a gondola carriage more than a car, containing two bench seats facing each other.

The vehicle is completely symmetrical not just left-to-right, with sliding doors on both sides, but front-to-back; that makes it bi-directional, meaning driving “forward” or “backward” is merely a semantic distinction. The vehicle never has to make a U-turn (though it can). The light clusters at each end are identical, serving as headlights or taillights depending on which way it’s going.

As for the user experience: Zoox is currently operating along and around the Las Vegas strip, with fixed destinations limited to popular casinos and entertainment venues. Riders summon it via smartphone app, like an Uber, selecting their pick-up and drop-off points. The license plate of the vehicle is provided.

When the vehicle shows up, the doors open automatically, and a screen displays the passengers’ name/booking. The floor is low and easy to step into, designed to maximize accessibility.

Once passengers enter and take a seat, the vehicle won’t start moving until every passenger has their seatbelt on (there are cameras inside).

Passengers each have access to a screen with climate controls and a Help button; pressing the latter automatically connects you, via an audio link inside the vehicle, to a remote Zoox Support worker. Confusingly, there’s also an Emergency button above each seat, which does the same thing. The support worker has the ability to stop the vehicle.

There are USB-C charging outlets and wireless charging pads provided between the seats.

When it arrives at the destination, the doors again open automatically.

For now, the service is completely free. This is partly to encourage uptake, but also because Amazon has not yet gained regulatory approval to charge riders, which they’re currently applying for.

The service just launched this week, so you can expect to see Zoox-riding influencer videos popping up shortly. The company has also announced plans to muscle in on Waymo territory, specifically Austin and San Francisco, and both companies have announced plans to expand into Miami.

A Designey Ultrasonic Cleaner for Retainers, Mouthguards or Nightguards

If you use a dental retainer or sleep with a nightguard, you know they can get funky pretty quickly. If you don’t properly clean it, you can do more than give yourself bad breath: James, the founder of a company called Zima Dental, actually gave himself strep throat from wearing an inadequately-cleaned retainer.

James subsequently founded the company to create this Dental Pod, which cleans oral devices ultrasonically, using just water:

“The Dental Pod uses high-frequency 42,000 Hz ultrasonic waves to vibrate the solution and produce millions of nano-scale bubbles. These bubbles rapidly collapse, releasing a large amount of energy, breaking down bacteria and plaque while being non abrasive to your dental appliance. Ultrasonic cleaning technology is safe and reliable and has been widely used in laboratory, commercial, industrial and other fields for decades.”

You can also drop in a cleaning tablet, if you want it extra fresh.

They run $100.

Using a Robot Arm to Create a Rotary Texturing Process

This texture below is what the Japanese call naguri, which literally translates to “beaten,” revealing its metalworking roots. In wood, the texture is achieved with an adze or gouge.

Image: Wrath of Gnon

Woodworker Takurou Seino invented a router jig to produce the texture using electricity.

Leigh Aitken, an Australian design engineer and robotics specialist, has taken it even further. His company, Twig&Bot, specializes in CNC-created furniture and building elements. In the studio, Aitken’s been getting the ‘bot to produce naguri-like work:

“Experimenting with a parametric random scalloped texture generator I’ve been working on for the robot. This is the first trial straight off the cutter (no sanding). The lemon scented gum cut incredibly cleanly.”

“Some more robot texturing experiments. Full chaos (top) and escalating chaos (bottom). Looking forward to applying these to some furniture pieces and sculptural elements soon.”

As of yet there’s no finished product, just the teaser below. Aitken’s figured out how to produce the texture in a way we haven’t seen before: Cylindrically.

You can see Aitken’s finished works here.

More Design Tricks for Tight Living Spaces: A Camper with a Sliding Bathroom

In an earlier post, we showed you four nifty interior design tricks by German RV manufacturer Bürstner. One of them was this bathroom where the sink slides over the toilet, turning the space into a shower.

They’ve pushed this idea even further with their Habiton camper van.

Now the entire bathroom itself slides, in addition to just the sink. When the bathroom is in its forward position, it provides enough space behind it to have two full-length twin beds.

There’s also a third sleeping location within the heated pop-up roof.

Sliding the bathroom rearward provides the space to deploy the two-person dining set-up.

Obviously this requires folding one of the beds out of the way.

Within the bathroom itself, when it’s time to take a shower, the sink folds up, and the toilet slides beneath the under-bed space behind the bathroom.

It’s a pretty smart arrangement; inside a camper you’ll eat, sleep and use the bathroom, but never at the same time. Similarly you’ll use the toilet and the shower, but never at the same time. It makes sense that the fixture not being used at the moment should temporarily disappear, to make space for what is being used.

Peter Donders’ Astonishing Handcrafted Walnut Shelly Chair

Belgian designer Peter Donders is a real materials maniac. This Shelly chair was made by producing a 3D print, making a mold around the print, then casting the chair in bronze.

Then he went and, just for the hell of it, made this bonkers handcrafted (not cast, obviously) version of the chair in freaking Walnut:

The latter chair is called, as you might guess, Walnut Shelly. And no, it most certainly is not headed for production.

Why Darth Vader’s Head is on the Washington National Cathedral

In the early 1980s, Washington’s National Cathedral was losing relevance with the younger generation. In an effort at outreach, they partnered with National Geographic to hold a “Draw-a-Grotesque” competition for schoolkids. (A grotesque is a gargoyle, without the water-draining feature; it’s purely decorative.) The winning designs would actually be carved in stone and installed on the cathedral.

The Grand Prize winner was of a toothy man; the first and second runners-up were of a girl and a squirrel. But it’s the third runner up that today is most notable. Thirteen-year-old Chris Rader of Nebraska submitted his drawing of Darth Vader’s head. “I read that grotesques are often demons or monsters,” Rader explained. “Darth Vader is a lot like a demon. He’s evil, so I thought he would be a good choice.”

A stonemason was hired, and all four designs were carved and added to the cathedral.

While you can’t make out the Dark Lord of the Sith in long shots of the cathedral, an on-site placard provides guidance for visitors with binoculars.

I imagine Lucasfilm let this one slide.

While Foreign Engineers are Arrested, a Humanoid Robot Quietly Put in a 20-Hour Shift at a Car Factory

The Hyundai-LG Metaplant in Georgia is a joint battery production facility set up by the two South Korean giants. Representing at least $7.6 billion in direct investment, it’s the largest economic development project in Georgia’s history; it’s expected to provide 8,500 jobs directly at the plant and 40,000 direct/indirect jobs statewide, bringing in a total of $4.6 billion a year. In short, once it’s up and running, it will be good for the U.S. economy.

So I was surprised to learn that an immigration raid on the plant arrested over 300 South Korean workers. These were predominantly engineers and technical specialists, brought over by Hyundai subcontractors to install equipment for the battery and production line. “No company in the U.S. makes the machines that are used in the Georgia battery plant,” an immigration lawyer told PBS, “so they had to come from abroad to install or repair equipment on-site — work that would take about three to five years to train someone in the U.S. to do.”

The issue appears to be that the arrested workers were here on B-1 business visitor visas, but that the installation and repairs were taking longer than the visa period. However Christi Hulme, an American labor leader in Savannah, says local unions “believe Korean workers have been pouring cement, erecting steel, performing carpentry and fitting pipes.”

“Basically our labor was being given to illegal immigrants,” Hulme said, without providing evidence. ( I have a hard time believing Hyundai saved money by flying people over from Korea, and putting them up in a hotel, to do carpentry and plumbing.)

In any case, this post isn’t about immigration, although that raid falls neatly into our culture of sensationalized news. And hot-button sensationalized news provides a gigantic distraction from a much quieter, yet far more radical occurrence that recently happened at another foreign automaker’s plant in the American South.

At BMW’s Spartanburg, South Carolina plant, humanoid robot company Figure has been running trials with their ‘bots working on the production line. And they’ve set a record: A Figure 02 robot successfully completed a 20-hour continuous shift handling sheet metal panels, and it did it autonomously.

To be clear: The robot worked two shifts. Without taking a coffee break. Without going to the bathroom. Without stopping to eat, check its phone or field calls from its kids.

At press time, you could find a lot of media ink spilled about the Metaplant immigration raid. But you can’t find any news of any labor unions protesting the robot that flawlessly worked a double shift. You’d think we’d see at least one labor leader saying “Basically our labor will be given to robots.”

BIM-Driven Layout Robot Saves Time, Money

A bad use for robots: Replacing a human worker that can do the work just as well. A good use: Performing a task that makes human workers’ jobs easier, without replacing them.

This Dusty FieldPrint robot by Dusty Robotics is in the good column.

What I’ve learned by working with contractors is that in residential construction, when the trades don’t communicate, problems arise, time is wasted, tempers flare and costs rise. As examples, the framer puts a floor joist right where a toilet main is supposed to go. Or the plumbing crew is running late, so the sheetrock guys do their work and take off, then the plumbers have to blast holes in the sheetrock. These things result in rework and headaches for the general contractor.

In commercial construction, the stakes rise. You’ve got more people on the job, and all of the trades traditionally do their own layout (i.e., transferring the relevant parts of the architect’s construction drawings onto the floor) down on their knees with a tape measure, lasers and chalk or paint. Layout can be a nightmare, and if you get one reference point wrong, you can inadvertently set up a cascading series of errors that all need to be corrected. Now the client’s paying 10, 20 guys and gals to stand around, waiting for the problem to be fixed before they can get to their work.

In short, layout errors play a major role in cost overruns and construction delays. It’s no exaggeration to say that simple marking errors can set commercial projects back by months.

That’s where the Dusty robot comes in. Like the sports-field-painting robot we looked at here, it’s a little droid that scoots around and lays down crisp lines. Dusty is loaded up with the construction drawings for all of the trades, and prints them on the floor, all at once.

Its “handwriting” is a font and thus perfectly legible. And it doesn’t make mistakes or read drawings incorrectly.

To better understand the deep impact this tiny ‘bot has, and how much easier it makes the jobs of the workers, listen to what the workers themselves have to say:

“Dusty’s laying out all the electrical, all the framing, mechanical, plumbing. We can see where everything’s at, and collaborate with all the other trades,” says Eric Rock, Superintendent. “Dusty eliminates all the rework. It reduces the timeframe of a job by at least a month, if not multiple months. I want it on every one of my jobs.”

A Revived Industrial Design Classic from Poland, Now in Three Flavors

Roman Modzelewski was a natural-born industrial designer, at a time when ID was not available in his native Poland as a field of study. In the 1940s, when he was of college age, he studied painting and sculpture at Warsaw’s Academy of Fine Arts. In the 1950s, having seen an Eames chair, he began experimenting with creating plywood furniture. He then began exploring materials and learned about fiberglass, which was not common in then-Communist Poland.

By learning to form fiberglass, in 1958 Modzelewski designed this striking chair:

The RM58, as it was called, was shown at exhibitions within Poland. News of the radical furniture piece spread beyond Poland’s borders, and the chair caught the eye of none other than Le Corbusier. The famous Frenchman expressed production interest to Modzelewski, but the Communists put the kibosh on international commercialization. The design remained a prototype, and Modzelewski went into the boatbuilding industry, putting his fiberglass skills to work.

In the 2000s Dr. Krystyna Luczak-Surówka, a Polish design historian and lecturer at Modzelewski’s alma mater, rediscovered the RM58 chair and began incorporating it into her teachings.

Krystyna Luczak-Surówka, photo: Hubert Warulik

The chair made an impression on one of her students, Jakub Sobiepanek, who dedicated his Master’s thesis and diploma project to updating Polish industrial design classics with modern production methods.

In 2012, Sobiepanek and Dr. Luczak-Surówka collaborated to create VZOR, a Polish furniture brand that is essentially an extension of Sobiepanek’s thesis. The company’s first project was reviving the RM58, in two versions: The RM58 Classic, which replicates Modzelewski’s fiberglass process, and the RM58 Matte, which is made in rotomolded polyethylene.

Today VZOR has added a third variant, the RM58 Soft, which is upholstered.

Sadly, Modzelewski never got to see the chair in production; he passed away in 1997.

In the ‘States, the MoMA Design Store carries the RM58 Classic. It retails for $2,000.

Nendo’s Helically-Mated Pair of Chopsticks

Remember Kaare Klint’s Propellor Stool, where the helical legs nest together?

An unlikely relative exists in these Rassen chopsticks, designed by Nendo for manufacturer Hashikura Matsukan.

“Chopsticks ordinarily come in pairs, but the Rassen chopsticks are a single unit. They’re separated into two for eating, then rejoined into one form when not in use. We used the artisans’s hand skills and a multi-axis CNC miller to create them.”

“For four centuries, the town of Obama in Fukui Prefecture, Japan, has manufactured lacquered chopsticks. Obama’s lacquered chopsticks have been recognised as the hardest and most beautiful of Japanese lacquer chopsticks since the seventeenth century, when they became known as Wakasa-nuri. We designed these chopsticks in collaboration with Hashikura Matsukan, a manufacturer who continue Obama’s traditional manufacturing techniques today. ”