In celebration of its 100th anniversary, the BMW Group commissioned the development of the Iconic Impulses exhibition, which looks ahead to the future: What will mobility look like in the next 100 years? What will move people? The technical implementation of the international exhibition was undertaken by MKTAG from Olching near Munich. MKTAG relied on drives from Faulhaber.
The approach taken by MTKAG was to explain the complexity of the modern world in a simple manner and yet still create a unique experience for the visitor. "Our strength is our ability to summarise technically complex and complicated facts concisely and literally make them tangible," explains chairman Alex Haschkamp. For their customers, MKTAG realises unique exhibits, multimedia presentations, interactive installations and descriptive models, whereby the viewer is invited to interact.
For the anniversary of the BMW Group, the task was to think ahead about mobility in the future. Exhibits for the four core brands – BMW, MINI, Rolls-Royce and BMW Motorcycle – were designed to transport the visionary ideas developers have for mobility in the future. Embedded in a concentric room concept, a kinetic-digital exhibit was created for each of the brands that activated the imagination of the viewer. Here, narration, sound, sculpture and viewer merged into a vision for mobility of the future. For the MINI, for example, a digital light sculpture was developed that aligned its individual interplay of colour with the heartbeat of the visitor, thereby reflecting its uniqueness.
In the brand space of BMW, a kinetic sculpture explains to the user the future of mobility. Hundreds of extremely thin carbon scales, arranged in a spherical shape, fascinate as a shape-shifter. They move elegantly and fluidly and represent the agility that will embody the vehicles of the future, according to the vision of the BMW developers. Already today, the BMW brand stands for pure driving pleasure. The fascination of driving will continue to intensify in the future, of that the BMW developers are certain. New technologies will allow the driver to constantly and intuitively exchange information with his vehicle. This will expand the driver’s spectrum of perception and make him an Ultimate Driver – the best driver there ever was.
MKTAG implemented the kinetic sculpture twice: one exhibit had 92 Faulhaber LM2070 Quickshaft linear motors and the other had 42. "The complex control system had to be silent and agile," explained MKTAG’s Axel Haschkamp. "We imagined beautiful, dynamic movements. For this reason, we decided on drives from Faulhaber: they do this effortlessly and reliably."
The control system was realised with CANopen motion controllers from Faulhaber.
"In collaboration with the motion control experts from the Faulhaber company, the cycle times of the complete system could be optimised and fascinating, flowing movements achieved," said Andreas Eiler, who was responsible for this project at Faulhaber. For the shape-shifter with 42 motors, the strokes had a radius of 300 to 400 millimetres; for the model with 92 motors, the radius ranged from 350 to 430 millimetres.
The Iconic impulses exhibition has thrilled visitors in Munich, Beijing, London and Los Angeles. It can still be viewed in the Double Cone of BMW Welt in Munich.
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