FOCAL POINT
NEED A LIFT? Zipping down Stephen Avenue is Dragon Bike, a souped-up scooter created by the Junior Engineers Club of Calgary. The club provides programs for youth to develop their love of engineering. -photo by Denise Kitagawa
All the Buzz at Beakerhead BY CORINNE LUTTER Member & Internal Communications Coordinator
Festo is part of the Bionic Learning Network, a group of universities, institutes, and companies that develop machines inspired by nature. Previous projects include SmartBird, which mimics seagull flight, and the jumping BionicKangaroo, which converts the energy from one bounce to power the next. Another creation, the Bionic Elephant Trunk, is used in the real world as a robotic handling assistant.
Have you ever marvelled at the aerial acrobatics of a dragonfly zipping through the air? The folks in Festo sure have. They were so inspired, in fact, that they decided to build a robot that could do the same. Enter the BionicOpter. Like a real dragonfly, it flies up, down, forwards, backwards, and sideways — and then, to top it off, it hovers like a helicopter and floats like a glider. The ultralight drone awed spectators when it took flight at Beakerhead, the an- nual science, technology, engineering, and arts spectacle held September 16 to 20 in Calgary and sponsored in part by APEGA. Festo, a German technology company with offices in Mississauga, specializing in industrial automation, partnered with the University of Calgary and the university’s Schulich School of Engineering to bring the BionicOpter to Beakerhead.
BEAKERHEAD 2015 BY THE NUMBERS
• 62 events • 14.7 million social media impressions (up nearly 200 per cent from 2014) • 148 local artists • 30 artists from around the world • 7,000 mushroom blocks used for IN/FLUX public art installa- tion • 11 dogs involved in a dog orchestra called Pavlovian Rhapsody • 31 restaurants that created engineered eats
BEAKERS AHEAD
Beakerhead brings together the arts and engineering sectors from across Calgary, the province, the country, and the world, allowing them to build, compete, and exhibit interactive works of art, science, spectacle, and enter- tainment. The five-day international phenom- enon of art, culture, science, and technology returns to Calgary September 14-18, 2016.
WINTER 2015 PEG | 65
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