Today in Engineering Newswire, we’re straddling the road in an electric bus, providing sight to the blind with a bionic eye, and 3D printing a fully-functional office building.
Street-Straddling Concept Bus
To combat congested city roads, an innovative transportation idea was revisited last weekend at the 19th International High-Tech Expo in Beijing. The electric “straddling bus” features an extra wide design to carry upwards of 1,400 passengers.
But what makes it really unique is that it is tall enough to allow any cars under seven feet to travel underneath, whether the bus is moving or not.
Bionic Eye Provides Site to Blind Man
John Jameson suffered from histoplasmosis fungal infection, causing his eyes to blur. After a follow-up laser surgery to reverse the injection further damaged his vision, he was declared legally blind.
Dr. Christopher Shelby of the WK Eye Institute implanted a miniature Galilean telescope containing wide-angle micro-optical lenses into his eye, replacing the lens. The telescope can enlarge images to about 2.2 to 2.7 times their average size, allowing images to project onto the healthy parts of the retina.
World’s First 3D Printed Office Building Completed
3D printing has come a long way in the past decade. So much so that the first 3D printed office building was just completed in Dubai. Located within Dubai’s Emirates Towers complex, the fully-functional office takes up a footprint of 2,690 square feet.
A monstrous 3D printer measuring 20 x 20 x 40 feet did the majority of the work by extruding a cement mixture layer by layer. Plus, a few smaller mobile 3D printers were used as well.
