With clients ranging from major research universities to artists, from industrialists to inventors, our work is unified by the pursuit of elegant solutions and a commitment to quality workmanship.
Our areas of accomplishment range from solutions for improving cardiovascular surgery to refinement of aerospace manufacturing processes to concept development and prototyping for consumer electronics devices.
Our areas of interest and expertise include industrial design, biomedical engineering, software development, robotics, information technology, manufacturing process design, creativity coaching, art/technology integration, ergonomics, cartography and environmental design -- just to name a few.
Some examples of our work:
Tools for Minimally Invasive Robotic Surgery (MIRS)
Robotic systems have become the state of the art in many types of surgical procedures, allowing the surgeon to perform complex operations through small, fast healing incisions. Tackle is a member of an interdisciplinary team of NIH funded researchers at NCSU developing retraction and fixation tools for MIRS procedures. Our involvement has included creativity training for team members, concept development and prototyping work as well as participation in surgical trials.
The All Patents Initiative
Tackle started the All Patents Initiative to enable researchers from many backgrounds to explore the entire US patent database, which contains a rich history of technology reaching back to the 1790s. The project is creating data and software which will support easy access to the temporal, topical, geographical, technical and social information contained in patents, increasing insight into the history and future of intellectual property. The initiative is rapidly gaining momentum, and contributors now include Duke University, Free Patents Online, HP Labs, Hueism Inc, the Internet Archive, Shodor Foundation and Sigma Xi.
The Open Prosthetics Project
Tackle has launched The Open Prosthetics Project to create useful and innovative prosthetic devices and fully publish our designs for anyone to use, customize, or improve on. By substituting public good for profits, we believe that we can generate far more societal benefit than if we commercialized and sold our ideas. We are currently developing several novel prosthetic concepts and seeking funding from donations and grants.
Web Based Book Viewer
In collaboration with the Internet Archive, Tackle developed a JavaScript book viewer technology for exploring digitally archived copies of paper books. The viewer, based on a design by the British Library, now serves as the core of the Internet Archive's Open Library project. The goal of the viewer is to remain as true as possible to the aesthetics and experience of paper books while also taking advantage of new opporunties allowed by digital representation. The content for the Open Library comes in part from the Open Content Alliance, a collaboration between Internet Archive, Adobe, Microsoft, Yahoo! and others with the intent to digitize and make publicly available millions of public domain books.
Artist Technical Support
Tackle assisted sculptor David Solow in the implementation of his wax luminary exhibition runway at the NC Museum of Art. Our services ranged from refinement of a complex casting process for handling over a quarter ton of beeswax to thermal analysis and troubleshooting of the finished luminaries. Members of the Tackle team were in studio and on site throughout the project assisting David's staff, ensuring that problems were solved and deadlines were met.
Copyright 2005-2006 - Tackle Design Inc.