New cool vehicle

[VJ]

How do they come up with it?

http://www.gizmag.co.uk/go/5638/

Jörg

[TransformX]

Another cool one: http://www.therapyproducts.com/products_sunnybike.html

[Brian Ellis]

I've just come up with an idea.

Place two of these vehicles side-by-side and fix them together. With a pick-up platform between them, it would make a useful farm or building site utility vehicle with the advantage that steering would be simplified, as you could do it by adjusting the relative speeds of the engines. That would then allow a steel, rather than a rubber, pair of tracks to be used to make it into a truly all-terrain vehicle and you could add a bulldozer blade or shovel on the front. From there, you could clad the lot with armour-plating for a military people-carrier. Then the acme, add a rotating turret with an 80 mm Howitzer and you would have an ideal combat vehicle. It only requires a little imagination.

[TransformX]

Aww Brian, 80mm is OLD... New generation tanks have a 120mm turret

[VJ]

This is cool:

http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/airtrax-sidewinder-omnidirectional-forklift-174324.php

(check out the movie)


Jörg

[gt40]

Another cool one: http://www.therapyproducts.com/products_sunnybike.html

It will never sell.

Can't put baseball cards in the spokes

[Brian Ellis]

This is cool:

http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/airtrax-sidewinder-omnidirectional-forklift-174324.php

(check out the movie)


Jörg

Wow! That's impressive. If the technology could be applied to wheelchairs at a reasonable cost, think of how the mobility of handicapped people could be improved.

One of their patents:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r=5&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1=airtrax&OS=airtrax&RS=airtrax

[Dr Mordrid]

Where in hell was that thing when I was working a warehouse?

Shhhhheeeesssshhhh....

Brians right; that would be a good handicapper mobility design, but I like Toyota's I-Foot walking mech better. It can navigate stairs. I-Unit is the wheeled one.

http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/robots/toyoto-ifoot-and-iunit-026866.php

[VJ]

The i-bot is also capable of stairs... (and is available now) Ok it is not perfect, but it gets the job done.

http://www.independencenow.com/

(and the Toyota unit is quite big, I suspect they need to scale it down somewhat)



Jörg

[Dr Mordrid]

Not a mobility device, but still cool;

http://offsite.wdg.us/mae/Raff/InteractiveDynamicArt/ChairJan06Short.wmv