Tag: PROTOTYPES

While they might not admit it, many of the folks in your office have used the copy machine for, shall we say, purposes not detailed in the instruction manual. We're talking about photocopied images of sweaty butt cheeks. If you've ever tried this, you'd know it's not easy to hoist yourself up on top of that copy machine. Thanks to interactive designer Tomomi Sayuda, those obligatory posterior ...

BMW has always been known for its quality craftsmanship and highbrow pretentions -- neither of these traits are in short supply with the company's new low emission vehicle prototype. The Compact Low Emission Vehicle for Urban Transportation (or, um, 'CLEVER' for short), while still a concept, sports some pretty novel ideas: The three-wheeled vehicle uses a special engine that runs on ...

In America, we worry extensively about crash-test ratings for cars, which determine how likely automobile passengers are to survive a given impact, but in Europe that concern is extending to those outside the vehicle. Already, some European laws have mandated that new features designed specifically to protect pedestrians be outfitted in cars by 2012. One such feature, currently under ...

2009 marks the 200th birthday of Louis Braille, the ingenious inventor of the eponymously named letter code that enables the blind to read by touch. Aside from Samsung's award-winning Touch Messenger (which featured Braille touch pads for text-messaging), the system has remained largely ignored by evolving technology -- until now. Just in time for the bicentennial birthday celebration, a team of ...

Thank heavens -- the $154 million water recycling system, which is designed to convert sweat, moisture and urine into an ingestible fluid, um, works. According to NASA, the Urine Processor Assembly (UPA) managed to get through three rigorous testing sessions, and apparently that was good enough for officials to leave it in orbit. So yeah, theoretically we now have a way to keep long-term space ...

Berlin-based designers have developed an in-car video game prototype that records the outside environment as a car moves, integrating features to create an 'Asteroids'-like experience on a laptop. Don't worry, in this case, it's the passenger who plays the game on his or her laptop. With the help of a window-attached film camera that captures the landscape as the car cruises, the program ...

Are you tired of sneaking off to the janitor's closet to get some shut eye? Well, we are too. Fortunately, for all of us beaten down by oppressive bosses and long work weeks, there is someone out there who yearns for sleep enough to actually to do something about the problem. That person, by the way, is Ivonne Dippmann. A student at the University of Berlin (Germany), Dippman created the a ...

Sometimes the best inventions are the simplest ones. Take, for example, the problem of burnt toast -- one which has ruined many a morning throughout time. The solution? A new glass toaster that actually lets you see your bread as it browns. The result? No more burnt bread. You can actually stop it when the toast gets to your preferred level of doneness. Thankfully, a traditional timer dial is ...

So you're in Sub-Saharan Africa. You're surrounded by more bugs than Windows 95, and there isn't a power outlet for miles. But you've seen 'The Matrix,' so really it's not that much of a stretch: a bacteria-powered cellphone charger could be the answer to the lack of phone infrastructure in the developing world, even for those without electricity. The newest iteration of the technology comes ...

We may be destroying nature, but at least we're learning from it. Researchers at M.I.T. have created mechanical fins to power agile submarines, mimicking the movements of the bluegill sunfish as it moves through the water. The result is a propellerless submarine, significantly more maneuverable than anything before it. While they're still in prototype phase, the subs will eventually be used ...