GENOMICON

Ingenious

Motorized shoes – for people too lazy to walk, or people who are disabled… and not able to walk…

…the ranks of whom are swelling by the day, on account of the lazy ones, attempting to use motorized shoes.

Brilliant. A solution looking for a problem that creates the problem it is designed to solve.

Reminds me of something actually – not sure what, but I think it’s got something to do with beer.

Everyone wants one, but as soon as they turn up with any level of affordability, someone will crash one and then some existing industry (air? road?) will fund some “won’t someone think of the children” lobby-group to get a law passed making them illegal, so only rich people or people in Brazil will be able to use them, and only mega-corporations will be able to make them.

This happens every time.

The killer-app, the intel-inside of the 21st century is shaping up to be the ability to ignore stupid laws designed to protect legacy industries… for our “safety”.

Whatever.

Why do I like this? You already know why I like this… I like this because it looks like an Aptera, and Aptera’s rock.

Apeteras are the future of transport methinks – but they need to be open-sourced, and made out of bamboo. If I had a million dollars I’d spend it all on doing just this. I know people who could make such a creature. You could use your iPad or iPhone or whatever with all it’s built-in geo / tilt-sensing smarts as the dashboard… bingo. The controls themselves should be mechanical, but the smarts can be… well, smart. The average iPhone has more computing power than it took to put a man on the moon and… well, driving a car isn’t rocket-science is it?

It’s got to be dead-cheap, makeable and repairable out of local materials anywhere on the planet, and affordable to… everyone. It’s the global Volkswagon for the 21st Century. If it can fly, then that’s an added bonus. If it can fly, and it only does 100km/h and it’s made out of bamboo and has airbags, then you can probably crash it without killing yourself.

I think you could probably set up the entire project for less than it would cost to buy a Lamborghini.

I’m not entirely sure what this is, but I think it looks pretty cool

The wheels look a bit silly on a body that wide, but still… excellent. A few (major) tweaks here and there, and you’ve got a winner I think.

I’ve been looking for these photos (or something like them) for years now

This one’s from the 30s – so it’s not quite what I’m after… but there was a phase in aircraft design when the scalability was pushed to the point of collapse… these huge machines with dozens of propeller engines… then Jet engines were invented, and the terrain changed completely… leaving dinosaurs stillborn.

Some were made I think,

But these picture are mainly renders,

made even cooler with massive guns and Nazi UFOs

(from : via)

But I think it’s a nice example of a certain point in an evolutionary life-cycle… where something becomes so bloated with its own success that it becomes a bit of a sitting duck to something more maneuverable (and cheaper)

From : Via

Although I’m not sure about that long bit sticking out the back. Reminds me of something off Dune… and it’s good to see a bit of chrome etc. Proper. Proper styling.

The way there’s a MASSIVE windowsill at the front is cool as well – you can fit literally dozens of old crisp-packets and coke cans etc up there – although I think personally, I’d put in some sort of herb (pronounced H-erb… like “Herbie”) garden in instead. So you could nibble on a bit of mint, or a chive or something as you were driving along.

As this (with a bit of tweaking) has only one wheel at the front, it’s technically/legally a bike – which means you don’t need to conform to all sorts of safety regulations.

A Wing in Ground Effect thing – someone in NZ has put wings on his hovercraft and controls and such… and

a) got on TV

b) sold it on ebay – for $27,000 which let me tell you people, is bugger all. It’s about 1/2 that in USD.

“The fuel economy is far better than a boat of the same size and speed.It has a range of over 225km and cruises at 90km/hr when flying,and has a smooth ride above the waves!”

And legally, it’s a boat rather than a plane.

Brilliant – and if you hit the water at 90km an hour, you wouldn’t automatically die – assuming you were wearing enough bubble-wrap, or were entirely encased in a safety-zorb or something. That would be cool. You could have zorb-fights.

It was a kiwi bloke who made a cruise-missile in his backyard about 5 years ago as well.

And of course there was Richard Pearse.

Who I will never stop going on about.

My Grandfather used to fly Tiger-Moths. I mainly watch television.

Now I hate concepts as much as the next man, but I like this one because the reflection in it looks a bit like the street that I used to live in in Tallinn, which is where I wish I was now.

It’s a sort of wheelie bike thing, from Tuvie which is a site that specialises in things that will never be made in a million years. If you did have cup-holders, they’d need to be on a sort of gimbal type thing because you’d spend most of your life lying on your side, laughing embarrassedly as people helped you try and get upright, only to fall over again. There’s also this thing where if you’re going along and suddenly put the brakes on, you’d just keep rolling… unless you deliberately tipped over on your side again.

There’s another transport concept that won’t ever get made here:

Which looks quite cool – a sort of airship for posh people… with ez-wipe surfaces everywhere so the rich-person-chunder can quickly be dealt with by squadrons of vomit-roombas. You could just completely lose control of all your bodily functions and it wouldn’t matter.

It also looks like there’s a special hole (surrounded by seats) where you can hurl misbehaving children / elderly relatives in wheelchairs etc. They really have thought of everything. Except carpet.

Swedish teapot cars.

(via)

Now these may look like Messerschmitts from back in the day, but apparently (when they finally get them going) you’ll be able to upload your own images which will be utterly brilliant because I’ll be able to put my face on them, to match my wallpaper.

Or maybe I’ll use the same design philosophy that I used for my custom swearbot from last year.

God I can’t wait for the future. It’s going to be so great that I’m going to have to spend the whole time having a nice quiet lie down to recover. I’ll have to wear shades.

Anyway, enough about that.

Someone, somewhere else has made a teapot car that looks a bit like those Dutch bike ones tow a solar trailer and a windmill, and they’re attempting to go round the world with it…

… which is like taking the scenic route to staying exactly where you are. Waste of time… but not a waste of petrol.

I quite like this because although the solar thing on the back is pretty massive… it does keep the thing going (with some help with the windmill) all day. And most of us don’t drive all day… so it isn’t entirely inconceivable that with twice as many solar panels (the price of which are going through the floor) that we could drive about for free. Give or take a parking ticket or two (note that this design has been craftily tweaked to make it impossible to wheel-clamp)

True, the speed is probably about 2 miles an hour, and you’re practically sitting in the other guy’s pocket… but… in an urban context, the 2 miles an hour is how fast cars go anyway, and besides, maybe if cars were lighter and slower, they wouldn’t kill as many people. They’d also be a hell of a lot cheaper, which would mean you could afford them without an utterly unsustainable western cost of living.

Ok – last thing… which (again) looks suspiciously like a “concept” – a car chassis where you can built your own “rest of the car bit”

Which seems like a good idea – although the last time someone tried this, what they got was the opposite of a teapot car – in fact it did look a bit like the Ultimate Arsehole car.

The worry I have about this is that it looks like it’s built on the “one ton of glass and steel to transport an individual capable of spending $20,000″ model. That ain’t where it at, I don’t think.

Part of the reason I like this,

although it IS a concept, and concepts annoy me, is that it looks like it’s made out of the same stuff that bike-frames are made out of… and it’s done in such a transparent way, that people can fix/adapt it themselves without having to spend a billion dollars on R&D.

If you took this one, tipped the props into the vertical so they became wheels, then put a shell over it like the Swedish car at the beginning, then you’d have the beginnings of a winner I think. You’d probably need a bigger power/pack and a hell of a lot more motor-gubbins, but you get the idea.

–

I’m not that interested in cars that are pitched at 20th Century markets. The imagination for that one has been stagnant for the last 30 years, and the whole thing has been an exercise in sustaining (the unsustainable) status-quo with incremental innovations. It’s all so Microsoft. What we need is Linux. We need to rewrite the kernal, starting with the business model.

(from)

> Cool. Why has it got eight wheels?

+ Because there’s a motor on each wheel – 8 motors.

> Ok… but… why do you need 8 motors?

+ Because that’s how many wheels there are.

> Right…

+ And it goes at 370 km an hour. The acceleration is so fast that if you put your foot down, you’ll leave your eyeballs, your testicles and your donald-trump toupee sitting on the pavement 100s of yards behind you.

> Is that why you need so many wheels?

+ Partly.

> Can I have one with 3 wheels that only goes at 185km an hour? The traffic in London is slower than walking speed anyway.

+ No.

> I mean why did you even make one that goes this fast? It’s a bit like making a pair of size 80 shoes, or a sofa that you can’t fit in your living room isn’t it? It’s a bit like eating something bigger than your head.

+ fuck off and go away.

> and it looks a bit like a citroen doesn’t it? One of the older ones from The Day of The Jackal… not that recent crap one… the original one.

+ no it doesn’t. Fuck off, you’re annoying me now.

> Yes it does… it looks like an 8 wheeled citroen.

+ Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off.

(etc etc, repeat ad. naus.)

Really? Are you kidding me? I can’t believe you did that.

Does it go?

Holy crap, it goes.

There’s a big thing here, about China’s DIY plane culture, which is quite interesting. The trouble with low-energy planes though is you need a wingspan so big that the whole thing becomes a bit of a liability.

Interesting idea though – partly because I’m a bit obsessed with a bamboo version of one of these:

Which is for driving round on roads – but does actually look a bit like a plane cockpit. I’m pretty sure that the future of cars (and yes, they do have a future – if we’re to avoid going back to horses) is an open-source version of something really really cheap to put together and run.

And if it’s open-source, it means it’s quite possibly a plugin-platform… and one of the plugins could well be wings… so the much lamented lack of the flying cars we were promised could well be remedied by people doing it for themselves – rather than waiting for the lead from the big auto-manufacturers who are more interested in selling “lifestyles” than anything that people actually need.

Anyway, there it is. Video of human-powered plane (almost) flying here: