Hasta La Gadget!

A group of researchers at the Chiba Institute of Technology in Japan have figured out how to make an off-road wheelchair. They created a robotic wheelchair that can use its wheels as legs, thanks to its four-wheel drive and its two axles.

The wheelchair has built-in sensors that determine how to navigate the surrounding terrain. All the rider needs to do is point the joystick in the direction he wants to go and the wheelchair will figure out how to get there. It’s also kind enough to keep the seat level at all times even when moving on uneven ground. Finally, the wheelchair also has stabilizers that it can use to rotate in place, meaning it can easily turn 180º even in tight spaces.

I foresee a future X-Games division for walking wheelchair tricks.

[via DigInfo.TV via Ubergizmo]

John Lennon wrote “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” in 1967, but most of the fanciful lyrics were actually written in 1843. You see, Lennon didn’t pull them out of a drug-induced hallucination—he pulled them off a 19th-century poster advertising the Pablo Fanque Circus. The story’s actually fairly well known, but there are only a few existing photographs of the poster out there. Here’s how one man set out to recreate the original using the traditional techniques of wood engraving and letterpress printing. The results are stunning. [Cool Material] More »

You might live in a small apartment now, and really only need a single wireless speaker to handle your music needs. But then you move into a bigger better apartment, with a big, beautiful TV and need more audio power. Instead of relegating your trusty AirPlay speaker to second-class status and starting ove on the audio front, you could take a speaker like UnMonday’s 4.3L and repurpose it into a single satellite as part of a 5.1 dolby digital surround sound system. More »

As gadgets become more and more compact and portable, one thing that continues to stand in the way is the limitation of current battery technology. Just think of how the majority of space and weight inside your tablet or smartphone is its battery pack, and they still often run out of juice before you’re done for the day. As companies continue to work on improving battery life, and decreasing consumption, it would be nice to be able to generate more power when you need it. One conceptual device hopes to help a little bit, by harnessing the energy you expend when you walk or run.

While industrial designer Toby Blake’s Kinetic Charger concept isn’t the first such gadget, it’s definitely one of the more stylish and compact attempts to create a kinetic-energy storage device. The small USB charger would simply clip onto your beltline or a pocket, and would harvest energy you expend as you move around throughout the day, using reverse electrowetting technology.

Blake envisions that each one could store up to 4 watts of power, and you could connect multiples together to increase available energy levels.

Now there are probably some practical challenges that would limit the effectiveness of such as small kinetic-capture device, and there’s really not much room inside of it for a supplemental battery pack to store that energy in either. Still, it’s a cool design, and I’d love to see it come to market someday.

[via EcoChunk]

If you live in a smallish apartment like I do, you probably don’t have a dinner table. You probably don’t need one often—definitely not often enough to justify using the space required to store one—but sitting on the couch, hunched over the coffee table just doesn’t feel right for some meals. What if you had a reversible table? Soon you can. More »