Birbla

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  • Hacker News
  • wow this looks incredible. love learning about this kind of stuff— no shortage of clever ideas just waiting out there in the ether for someone to make work!
    by keeganpoppen
  • Zipper? Combinator then?
    by hahahaa
  • The extendable/retractible robot legs/arms is a great application for this. Though, reminds me of the Sentinels in The Matix.
    by ourcat
  • https://patents.google.com/patent/US4757577A/en
    by wetherbeei
  • Very cool design but that tent looks heavy as hell and not at all wind resistant. The whole point of the poles in a dome tent is to provide force stretching the tent button (especially when staked down) to be drum tight. The poles being straight and then bent when assembled is the point.

    That being said maybe this could make for some very cool different types of designs

    by Melatonic
  • Just sell me the tent already!
    by fragmede
  • They never show the fully packaged version of the tent, though. It looks like even in their non-rigid state they're too rigid to be folded up easily and carelessly into a compact shape.
    by dinfinity
  • I could see this being useful for retractable banners also
    by Fordec
  • It's definitely pretty whiz bang but I'm curious how it would hold up to the dirt and grime of a backpacking trip. I'm also not convinced it is any better or lighter than poles (which can be pretty light with the right materials...)
    by jbmchuck
  • no kidding. it was the last demo in the video, but my first reaction seeing the zippers-instead-tent-poles demo was, "oh, that's going to be huge." weight and "how well does it handle wind?" are concerns, but i could totally see "100% zipper" tents on the market by the end of the year.
    by hugs
  • My first thought is a better tape measure. Wouldn’t that be cool if it didn’t bend.
    by bilsbie
  • Is any of MIT's stuff "open"?

    Clicking around on news.mit.edu I see lots of cool ideas. Articles mention "the software allows users to...", yet I never see a link to actual software.

    For example, I expected to be able to try that 3D-zipper generator they show in the video myself.

    Edit: found something:

    https://github.com/tichaesque/FabObscura

    by IdiotSavage
  • It brings to mind satellites assembling themselves in space. Send up a tightly packed box of spaghetti and extrude it into the desired physical shape upon arrival in orbit. For increased rigidity, paint with a solar pumped laser to weld the links together.
    by __MatrixMan__
  • > For increased rigidity, paint with a solar pumped laser to weld the links together.

    Or unseal purified metal surfaces, press them together, and use vacuum diffusion welding.

    With enough time and/or sunlight, it can happen on its own.

    by Terr_
  • Extremely similar to a rigid chain actuator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigid_chain_actuator
    by jml7c5
  • Zippers are usually attached to something.

    Is this design practical? What would it be used for? With this zipping mechanism, can anything be attached?

    Edit: Apparently I stopped watching the video too early. They demonstrate some uses where at max only one of the three sides can be attached to something, and it is used to create a rigid structure rather than joining multiple surfaces. The most interesting use demonstrated (IMO), is a tent with no tent poles, but it doesn't look like it would hold up to any significant weather, and would probably take up just as much space and weight as tent poles.

    by rationalist
  • I thought the extendable robot legs were the most interesting use with how compact the legs are when retracted
    by superb_dev
  • Also a stuck zipper now means your entire tent becomes useless.
    by amelius
  • Poles. The video shows a tent they set up just by zipping up the y zipper.
    by surround