This little guy, the Febot, charges your batteries, literally. Like, it literally charges Duracell (and other, lesser brands) batteries. Well, “literally” is a bit strong, as it’s only a concept, but whatever.
This is the Lull, a fancy children’s lamp that works in conjunction with the day/night cycle. That is, in the morning the lamp opens open not unlike a flower, shining light on your child’s face. Wake up. In the evening, the lamp closes and slowly dims, allowing your child to fall asleep while counting sheep or some such.
Reader Billy May sent us these concept sketches for the Nike Hindsight, specially design biking glasses with specifically tuned Fresnel lenses for keeping an eye on approaching taxis/cars/baby strollers.
Writes Billy:
Nike Hindsight is, put simply, like giving bicyclists a pair of bifocals for their peripheral vision. By using Fresnel lenses on the sides of eye wear, riders can detect motion in a field of view beyond the normal human limit of 180º. To get technical, high power, diverging Fresnel zones aligned vertically distort into view an extra 25º of view on either side. In doing this, vision is radically distorted in the periphery, but as the eye detects only motion in that area, little clarity is lost in the process.
Japan’s biggest cell phone carrier NTT Docomo had one of the coolest booths at this year’s CEATEC (which ended last Saturday), showcasing a lot of spectacular new stuff.
These are their cell phone concepts, some of which even might make it to the mass market one day. Watch a video of their microprojector cell-phone hybrid here and a see this post for more information on their cell phone/car key prototype made for Nissan (both are not pictured here).
Picture your flat’s sink full of nasty dishes. Ok, maybe not nasty nasty, but you know, dingy. Then all you do is fill up the sink with water and drop this little guy in. Press the indicator light to have your new roommate wash everything submerged with ultrasonic tech.
Who knows if this concept will ever make it out of CG-world and into my sink. If it helps though, I can provide an extensive list of guys willing to sell a lot of blood to fund such a device. It’s just so hard getting the dishes from the sink into the built-in dishwasher.
Tuvie via Cooking Gadgets
I’m not crazy about touchscreen keyboards — BUT! – I could probably make an exception for the Plica, if it ever comes out in real life. It’s a folding Nintendo DS-style device that can be used in landscape or portrait mode with one or both screens.
It’s brainchild of industrial designer James Piatt, who’s thoughtfully made the hinges of the device into a USB port and a headphone jack. Nice work.
[via Newlaunches]
Can you tell it’s summertime yet?
This delightful little concept that’ll never actually be manufactured, called Sweet Honey, combines aroma therapy with lossy MP3s, which just has to be a match made in Heaven. The little bulb thing on the other end of the headphone wire contains a scented tablet. Depending on the type of music being played, different scents are released.
Fact: when you play emo, the stench of failure emanates from the device.
Here’s a pencil-tiny cell phone (currently just a concept) for people with small pockets. From the looks of the device, there doesn’t appear to be much in the way of gobbledygook to confuse the older segment of society — except that they’d have to either squint or do that thing where they lift up their glasses and pull the thing WAY away from their face to see what’s going on.
Other than that, looks like we’ve simply got a numeric keypad, a mute button, a speaker, and a mic. Oh, and that sweet-looking fold-out screen. That’s the ticket right there. It’s just a concept device, but there’s no saying that it couldn’t be done.
via textually.org
Stunning! Imaginative! Practical! Never to be mass produced! All words and phrases you can use to describe Shiu Yuk Yuen’s concept umbrella, the Eco Brolly, which looks a lot less douchey than that other umbrella concept from a while back. It’s a plastic sleeve that you slide newspapers, shreds of cardboard and other assorted doodads to protect you from the cold hard rain.
Speaking of which, here’s a troubling anecdote. One afternoon about a month ago, it started to rain like the dickens. An elderly woman didn’t have an umbrella, so she put a plastic bag over her head. So, in the interest of not getting wet, she risked suffocation. Like, the bag was over her head and pulled tight as can be. It was both hilarious and thought-provoking.
People who think walking is too much trouble, this one’s for you. It’s a design by one Regimantas Vegele for a device that’s part Segway, part elliptical machine. Officially called Zingsniuoklis, you work it by stepping on the pedals, but rather than remaining stationary (as in the elliptical machine) your legs power forward movement.
Strange, you say? A waste of time, you snicker? Hardly! How many bright ideas are the product of ceaseless energy and thankless devotion?
via Yanko Design
What with all the hullabaloo about syncing your car with your phone or mp3 player, it’s only natural that rumors would arise about Apple having exclusive dealings with some company — and maybe even helping in the design of the car. Well, here’s some more fuel for the fire. This VW concept car featured in the German car mag Autobild looks more Apple-inspired than Apple-designed — even for a concept it looks a bit ridiculous. Rear-facing powder puff seats? Circular doors? Not likely, mein freund. [via Autoblog]
Feel free to correct my German.
Let’s say you live on Planet Pseudo-Science, where “weight” can be “generated” at the drop of a hat. Well, maybe not the drop of a hat, but rather the spinning of balls in a dumbbell.
The comic book premise certainly sounds fun! Balls inside each dumbbell can be set to rotate at different speeds. The faster they rotate, the more weight is generated. Seeing as though we live on planet Earth, where a little thing called physics applies, this design, while neat looking, is about as worthless as it gets.
The law of conservation of mass says, essentially, that matter cannot be created or destroyed in a closed system. These dumbbells claim to generate weight, which is a merely a function of gravity on mass. (That’s why you’d weigh differently on other planets—the gravitational force is different, while your mass remains constant.) Long story short, the spinning balls don’t change the dumbbells’ mass, so no change in weight could happen.
And now it’s time for Poland v. Austria, two rubbish teams.
via Boing Boing Gadgets and Gearfuse
Another day, another odd suit. This one, designed by Michael T. Rea, is called the “Suit for Stephen Hawking” and I don’t understand it at all. It’s made of wood, yes, but I doubt that’s its raison d’etre.
Actually, the whole lot of Rea’s creations are wooden. The man’s crazy for it.
via Make Blog
The EMC (”easy mobil calling,” which isn’t a typo on my part) concept cellphone aims to make life easier for the elderly. With only four face buttons, each corresponding to a separate phone number, it simplifies the arduous task of remembering, well, four different phone numbers. Granted, all cellphones have an address book, so you’re not really required to know anyone phone number to begin with—I don’t know any of my friends’ numbers at all—so I’m not too convinced of its effectiveness, but that’s largely irrelevant.
Go ahead and tell me this cellphone concept, the Egg, doesn’t look better than the HTC Diamond. The color scheme, the contours and curves, the UI, it all looks better, I think, than the Diamond. Yes, the Diamond has the advantage of being a “real” cellphone, but these days I tend to like concepts more than actual, finished products.
The thing about this concept lamp is that you get to show your own design chops. Designer Michail Komarov made it so that a series of interlocking tubes (that sounds familiar) can be arranged in any number of shapes and styles to suit your discerning taste. The way it’s arranged in this picture, I’d have no qualms putting that in my absolutely wonderful apartment.
I swear, all these designs are so much better than the real junk we put up with.
Here’s another wacky design/concept for you to look at, say “wtf,” then move on with your day. Apparently it’s called One to Three for Five (Seconds), which I can only assume alludes to the fact that it—and “it” is a piece of furniture—can quickly transform from one, I don’t know, square, into two chairs and a small table. The pre-disassembly square, presumably, is one of those “look how avant garde my furniture is;” other than looking, what, unique, in the corner of a room, I don’t know what purpose it could serve. The chairs, though, those I actually wouldn’t be embarrassed having in my apartment.
Given that no other John Nousanesing design has made it into a big box retailer, I wouldn’t put to much faith in seeing One to Three (…) either. Most of the stuff in his portfolio is worth checking out, though, if you like these concepts. I do, which is I post about ‘em seemingly every day.
via Yanko Design
Rather than accept the fact that books are passé, and they are, let’s shoehorn a computer in there to keep the good times a-rollin’. Such is the premise behind Kyle Bean’s book-computer-thing. While it has the exterior of a book, its insides are all computer. There’s some sort of display, full keyboard, optical drive, the works.
A nice design and all, sure, but as well all know, the real future of books lies in devices like the Kindle.
via Yanko Design
The Hive, designed by Oskar Daniel, puts a unique spin on sound bar design. Not simply a nondescript line against the wall, the Hive—hold onto your hats!—resembles a honeycomb cluster. I don’t know why only one cell is red, no. You should know that every cell is a speaker and can each be adjusted individually—brought forward, back, tilted to the side, whatever.
Fairly attractive. Much more so than the standard surround sound setup, at least.
via Yanko Design
Or maybe in 10 years or so. Designer Ingo Maurer has come up with a nice-looking lamp utilizing custom OLED panels created by Opto Semiconductors. The panels are quite small: 132×33mm, or a bit more than one inch by five. A few of them in his tree-like configuration would make for a bright and even lighting situation. The designer is very excited about the possibilities of the whisper-thin, energy-efficient light sources. I will be too, if I live to see one.
