from Yanko Design:
At the tops of the towers are urban wind power generators. On top of each of the train cars are solar power generators. The interiors of the cars are mostly open, with seats along the sides to conserve space.
The seats inside the cars are made of Corian which is both strong and easy to clean. OLED panels, touch screen interfaces, Wi-Fi internet, headphone jacks, Bluetooth, information boards, interactivity galore!
from DVICE:
When we first saw GM’s EN-V (Electronic Networked Vehicles), they looked like yet another far-fetched design concept, but now the company’s rolled out a video that shows the prototypes in action.
from NC State University:
Researchers from North Carolina State University have created a computer program that allows a car to stay in its lane without human control, opening the door to the development of new automobile safety features and military applications that could save lives.
Specifically, Snyder and his co-authors have written a program that uses algorithms to sort visual data and make decisions related to finding the lanes of a road, detecting how those lanes change as a car is moving, and controlling the car to stay in the correct lane.
from Inhabitat:
Ocean levels are rising around the globe, so rather than tethering our buildings to the sinking shoreline why not suit them for a life at sea?
That’s the approach behind the Water-Scraper, a futuristic self-sufficient floating city. A special mention in this year’s eVolo Skyscraper Competition, the design expands the concept of a floating island into a full-fledged underwater skyscraper that harvests renewable energy and grows its own food.
from Fast Company:
For her grad-thesis at the Art Center College of Design, Julia Yu Tsao created Curious Displays, a pretty amazing vision of what display technology might become, decades down the road.
Rather than a single screen, she envisions a swarm of autonomous blocks that occasionally join up to form a TV–but which can also disperse to highlight other information, such as what your schedule looks like, or even where your keys are.
from VentureBeat:
GestureTek specializes in interfaces that track a user’s hand gestures and body position using a camera. The video below is a concept demo from interface designers TAT.
But GestureTek is building the technology for real (initially to be used by a single user, unlike the multi-user scenario shown in the video). An extra camera module and custom lens is required to track the finger on the projected image. The tracking should be quite accurate, with similar performance to the iPhone touch interface.
from ecademy:
On the Intel booth at CeBIT 2010 we found Microvision with their motion-sensing, gun mounted laser projector… trust me, this is awesome!
from Singularity Hub:
Evgeny Orkin’s thesis project, called RollTop, is a concept video of a laptop that rolls into a tube to take with you on the go.
from h+ Magazine:
Data captured by the PMD would be linked over the internet into distributed software services like GPS, Google Maps, facial recognition, speech/text recognition, brainwave analysis and so on.
Would the PMD remember where you parked? Always.
Will it warn you when you are about to walk away and leave your hat and sunglasses on the bench behind you? Totally.
Will it send you birthday reminders, schedule your meetings, remind you to pick up your dry-cleaning and let you program your DVR with voice commands? Yes.
Will it find your car keys and remote control for you? Maybe.
Will it record your innermost thoughts? Probably not.
It won’t always be perfect, but it will greatly extend your normal range of memory, and over time it will become like an indispensable part of your brain.
from Physorg.com: <-
A new skin-based interface called Skinput allows users to use their own hands and arms as touchscreens by detecting the various ultralow-frequency sounds produced when tapping different parts of the skin.
In Skinput, a keyboard, menu, or other graphics are beamed onto a user’s palm and forearm from a pico projector embedded in an armband. An acoustic detector in the armband then determines which part of the display is activated by the user’s touch.
“A nanofactory is a proposed system in which nanomachines (resembling molecular assemblers, or industrial robot arms) would combine molecules to build larger atomically precise parts.”
from Inhabitat:
It may sound a bit creepy, but wouldn’t it be cool if buildings could grow their own skin? California-based architecture firm Faulders Studio certainly thinks so.
GEOtube, their proposal for Dubai is almost exactly like a normal building – except for the fact that it will have the ability to generate a web-like saline skin that spreads down the façade of the structure over time. [...] When the water evaporates, salt deposits will be left behind forming the tower’s exo-skeleton.
from PopSci:
A Harvard University chemist has created a prototype “chip” technology out of paper that could help diagnose HIV, malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases for just a penny each time, according to CNN.
A drop of blood on one side of the paper chip results in a colorful tree-like pattern that tells physicians or nurses whether a person has certain diseases. Water-repellent comic-book ink helps channel the blood into the tree-like pattern, as several layers of treated paper react to the blood and create the telling colors.
from DVICE:
The concept works almost exactly like an air hockey table, with a series of air compressors mounted to the bottom of the chair.
As it stands (or floats), the chair has a lot of problems. It wouldn’t work on rub or the tatami mats they have in Japan, for instance, and its ground clearance doesn’t give it too many options when it comes to uneven terrain. Still, the chair is just a prototype and the researchers are looking for investors — so maybe they have some grander designs.
from ImpactLAB:
A cooker that doesn’t use pots and pans could one day be taking center stage in your kitchen. All you need do is press your hand down on the softened surface to create a hole and in go the ingredients.
from Trendhunter (via Emergent Futures)
The Black Hole mobile concept design was made for Apple and predicted for 2020:
The holographic phone has a central mouse ball that levitates and allows the user to control all the phone functions and applications in mid-air.By just opening the palm of your hand, the central ball rises into the air and opens up the phone’s applications.
from inhabitat:
TAK’s wind-powered light uses the moving air from cars zipping by on the highway to generate energy that can be used to power roadside lighting.
As more and more people across the world adopt cars as their primary mode of transportation, well-lit highways become increasingly important. But how can we sustainably power all those energy-sucking lights?
TAK Studio addressed that question in their entry into this year’s Greener Gadgets competition to find the green technology solution of the future.
from Scienceray:
The conquest of outer space was on the mind of men decades ago, with some surprising similarities to today’s space platforms these visionaries seemed to predict the future. A future that they could not an have possibly understood or fathomed. Ultimately, we will need a new fleet of space shuttles to get there.
Morph is a concept demonstrating some of the possibilities nanotechnologies might enable in future communication devices. Morph can sense its environment, energy harvesting and is self cleaning .
Morph is a flexible two-piece device that can adapt its shape to different use modes. Nanotechnology enables it to have adaptive materials, yet rigid forms on demand.
