ROBOT HEART STORIES // Designers And Illustrators: Tap Into Your Inner Child

Illustrators and designers: Want to bring a child's imagination to life? If so, check out Robot Heart Stories, an exciting experiential learning project that brings together visual artists with 40 fifth-grade students from Montreal and Los Angeles.

Conceived by filmmaker, storyteller and experience designer Lance Weiler and creative producer Janine Saunders, Robot Heart Stories centers around a robot who's crash landed in Montreal and needs to reach Los Angeles to catch a rocket back to her home planet. The students are responsible for the storyline, using their imaginations to chart the robot's journey across North America. The designers get to depict those stories using photographs taken by the project's organizers at different places along the robot's path.

If you'd like to take part, all you have to do is pick one of the students' stories, download the associated photo, create a design inspired by the story and upload your final creation. For more details check out the FAQ. You've got until November 17 to submit your work.

Your submission will be featured on the Robot Heart Stories website and considered for a coffee table book, with all proceeds going to creative writing programs in public schools.

OK, now get cracking on those designs.

Because, really, how can anyone turn down this little guy to the right?

-- John Ruscher

SCIENCE SCENE // MIT Research Skylar Tibbits Explains "Self-Assembly"

For people who make things, the materials are as important as the process of constructing. So imagine if that material was animate, robotic and knew how to assemble itself. In this mind-blowing TED Talk, MIT researcher Skylar Tibbits talks about how that might one day happen--and as it were, how we do have the technology, While still a long way off, it's fodder for a whole new world of makers (and inevitably, terrifying sci-fi horror flicks.)

--Layla Schlack