Prototype This: Engineering the Impossible

[maverick_starstrider]

Hey, has anyone else seen this show prototype this? I'm captivated. It makes me wish, so badly, that I knew more about engineering. It's like mythbusters if they all have PhD's in different disciplines of engineering and the stuff they build (given only 2 weeks no less) is truly amazing. Anyone else seen this?

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I had never heard of it. So far all I can find are these little interview spots like this. Thought it might get the thread a bit more interest.

 

[maverick_starstrider]

"psychic" spoon bending

absolutely crazy. Only 10 days.

 

[redargon]

It's pretty cool, but the main "characters/presentors" don't really appeal to me that much, especially the lead guy that does a lot of the electronics. He reminds me of all the electrical engineering nerds that used to tell us how hard their lives were because they had to do an extra math module more than us (aeronauticals). He tries to be far out and funny, but it doesn't work. I like the guy that gets pissed off a lot, like the time with the fighting robot build. he's cool.

 

[Proton Soup]

never seen this show before. but honestly, it doesn't look like a lot of low-level engineering goes into it. they're mostly making use of off-the-shelf devices and some home-spun code. so put more of your efforts into programming and you could do these things.

 

[Topher925]

The show looks interesting. I'm always for things that are scientific and enginerd related. It doesn't look like they are doing anything that you couldn't easily do at home though. All the stuff I've seen from the youtube videos are things you could easily find in your common undergrad engineering project.

 

[maverick_starstrider]

The show looks interesting. I'm always for things that are scientific and enginerd related. It doesn't look like they are doing anything that you couldn't easily do at home though. All the stuff I've seen from the youtube videos are things you could easily find in your common undergrad engineering project.

I've never seen a car that can raise itself up on 4 retractable legs to coast over traffic as well as move sideways to park ON TOP of another car and has computer guided parking that allow it to park horizontally into a space that may only give it 1 inches leeway. Nor have I seen demolition derby cars that are remote controlled from like a little VR chair that require you to concentrate to start the ignition (you concentrate on pushing a square) and then remain calm throughout the battle (otherwise it slips into neutral). Or an "infinite" water slide made from a massive doughnut of slide material that perpetually rotates and tilts to simulate a never ending waterslide whose "path" is projected in front of the rider. But I dunno, may your school has a very cool engineering department. My alma mater had one of the best engineering schools there is and they mostly just had computer controlled dune buggies and such lying around.

 

[maverick_starstrider]

never seen this show before. but honestly, it doesn't look like a lot of low-level engineering goes into it. they're mostly making use of off-the-shelf devices and some home-spun code. so put more of your efforts into programming and you could do these things.

Every build requires custom hardware builds (he's always bread boxing one thing or another or making these soldered monstrosities), some software and some mech eng welding and building and such. There's one guy who is a "material science" guy but he seems to just do mech eng most of the time. Sometimes he has to choose composites and construction materials and such but not often.