Most annoying floor ever made of robot tiles
Hiroo Iwata, of the University of Tsukuba, created these robotic floor tiles that automatically arrange themselves to build a floor beneath you.
Transportation
Electrobike Pi
Spotted this sexy commercial electric bicycle in a back issue of Popular Science at the barber shop today. It’s called Pi, and the company that makes it is based out of San Francisco. The magazine article claims it uses a Nu Vinci continuously-variable transmission but the official company specs now only mention a Shimano 8-speed. Sounds like they’re still working out the kinks. Something to keep an eye on, though.
Unpowered Mechanical Gate Opener
Thinking about mechanical means for auto-opening a fence gate.
Cheap Yaris cabin air filter replacement
I’ll give dollars to donuts that Jake Von Slatt owns a Yaris because he likes to say “YAAAAAAAAAAARis” in a pirate voice. Anyhoo, Jake was tired of the ‘Yota dealership hitting him for 50 bucks to replace the factory cabin air filter, so he hacked together his own from a $5 home A/C filter and wrote a good tutorial about how to do so yourself. Take that ye scallywags!
Forkless bike from Finland
Olli Erkkilä created this custom concept bike as his graduation project from the Institute of Design in Lahti. [via Core77]
Amazing chopper bikes
Dan says: These folks dragged their bikes from all over Europe and many overseas even. The detailing is pro level and goes well beyond just the frames – there were a lot of hand made pedals, shifters, rims, brakes. There was a week of chopper bike events with up to 30 mile (!) rides but […]
Human powered hovercraft
Steam Boat Willy has an amazingly detailed account of the technical details on this human powered hovercraft. Via MITers
