This weekend I spent 24 hours struggling to complete an Adventure Race in the beautiful woods of upstate New York. It is aptly called “The Longest Day”. Briefly, an adventure race is looking for checkpoints based only on a topographic map and a few hints arranged in such a way…

— Robert L. Read, PhD, Founder, Public Invention — Joshua M. Pearce, John M. Thompson Chair in Information Technology and Innovation, Thompson Centre for Engineering Leadership & Innovation Ivey Business School, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Western University — Avinash Baskaran, PhD candidate, Robotics, Auburn University — Megan Cadena…

— Robert L. Read, Diego Aspinwall, and Neil Martis Note: This essay was written in 2021. Public Invention is now actively attempting to make a version of this code useful for disasters, whether natural or man-made, such as the invasion of Ukraine. If you are interested in working on that…

— Robert L. Read, January 2021 In 2020 something happened that we had been warned about: the COVID-19 pandemic scourged the whole planet. …

— Ben Coombs (guest blogger for Public Invention) As to diseases, make a habit of two things — to help, or at least to do no harm. — written by Hippocrates in Epidemics. A Diagram of Major Humanitarian Engineering Efforts (Link allows zooming) Early in 2020 the alarm bells rang…

Thursday, May 21st, Public Invention will host a short, free virtual conference about open source pandemic ventilators and the world-wide effort to prevent shortfalls and save lives. HelpfulEngineering and Make Magazine are co-hosting it; we have a great set of speakers giving 15-minute talks on a 3.5 hour schedule. I…

— by Robert L. Read, Jenny Filipetti This article is meant to be read by the engineers and NGOs communally attempting to address the world-wide shortfall of ventilators caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, or those facing similar future emergency scenarios. In the last month the engineering community as a whole…

Rob Giseburt, with the support of his firm Ten Mile Square, has published two long, informative, and extremely important blog posts (part 1 and part 2.) Public Invention has added “The Pressurizer” at the top of our spreadsheet of open-source ventilators and modules on the tab called “Drives”. In a…

— Dr Erich Schulz, MBBS, FANZCA and Robert L. Read, PhD For about the last six weeks, engineers have been scrambling to design ventilators that can be produced quickly in huge numbers to address an anticipated shortfall. At the same time, major manufactures have ramped up production and formed partnerships…