The CarGo is an interesting concept for an urban delivery vehicle that rethinks pickup design, adding a truckload of flexibility. The vehicle can transform into either compact mode, narrow mode or pick-up truck mode, adjusting to the volume and type of cargo you’re carrying.

The CarGo pickup truck is clever in that its design allows for capacious cargo space when required, but once goods have been delivered the vehicle can be shrunken to almost half the size – reducing its footprint on city streets.

Even when in compact mode, the transforming battery-powered utility can be used to store small items in the vertical tray, thanks to a built-in shelving system. The CarGo’s narrow mode is designed for quick deliveries in heavy traffic, featuring banking corner action that handles more like a delivery motorcycle than a van or truck. Also, when not in use, the storage compartment can be removed altogether to further reduce the vehicle’s size and weight.

Designed by Adam Schacter, the CarGo, like the Cargonaut and Cargo Scooter concepts we’ve seen previously, is a fascinating look at design ideas that may one day help improve congestion on our city streets.

Sources:
CarGo via Yanko Design

It won’t win you an endurance marathon (thanks to all the blood rushing to your head), but this unique contraption called the Skybike will certainly get you some attention. Created by a student at NYU, the Skybike seats the rider upside-down in order to create the illusion of riding in the clouds.

Resembling the A-Frame design of the STRiDA MAS, the Skybike straps the rider in at a 45-degree angle on the underbelly of the frame – which was made by hand from scraps of metal found on NYC streets.

“In a period where our basic needs are met, perhaps we need to satisfy more abstract, unusual and different needs.”

Unusual and different needs? Read: upskirt kink. Everything has a dark side.

Check out the videos below to see the Skybike in action. The first right-way-up, the second – you guessed it – upside-down.

Sources:
NYU and ITP
Via: Gizmodo

Did you ever watch the clouds as a kid and imagine resting peacefully on their soft fluffiness? Well, it certainly seems designer D.K. Wei did, as evidenced by this unique concept design called Cloud Sofa – which emulates that fantasy perfectly.

The Cloud Sofa looks like heaven for relaxing after a hard day of work and thanks to some magical magnetic levitation, hovers you peacefully in mid-air above its base. Of course there’s no mention of how it would maintain stability, or how the field would be isolated so that it doesn’t affect pacemakers, gadgets and the like. But still, pretty neat.

Sources:
KOOTOUCH via DVICE

If this is how the future looks, I’m excited. A company called Exmovere Holdings have come up with what seems to be a working prototype (video below) of a self-balancing, handsfree, motorized pod called the Chariot, that enables disabled people (and hopefully the rest of us too) the ability to get around effortlessly in an upright position.

The sensor-activated Chariot operates in a Segway-esque fashion, but has you harnessed inside the pod – which is sure to take some getting used to and time for trust to develop. No jumping off if the self-balancing system fails.

The benefits the Chariot would provide wheelchair-bound, mobility-impaired people are obvious, allowing them to get around with ease, but what about other applications? This could perhaps be the safest way to get home when you’re legless – or would that still count as drink driving? It does do 12mph you know.

Check out the video below to see the Chariot prototype in action. It’s quite captivating. When strapped into this wearable transportation device, the fully mobile man looks like a cross between Rosie from the Jetsons and an upright vacuum cleaner.

Sources:
BusinessWire (Press Release) via LikeCool

In what is one hellofa training project, 150 students at Daimler AG have put together a concept car called the Mercedes F-CELL, which marries high-tech roadster engineering with the charm of early horseless carriages.

The F-CELL was inspired by the very first Benz motor car, which dates back to 1886, but is powered by a hybrid-drive system that apparently makes use of a modern, emission-free fuel cell.

Mercedes claims their joystick-controlled vehicle could be the car of the future, which, with a top speed of 15.5mph, really makes me hope they’re wrong. The car has a range of 220 miles and has apparently taken a year to progress through development to construction and finally, to completion.

The roadster incorporates drive-by-wire steering and carbon-fiber bucket seats with hand-stitched leather coverings – just as you’d expect from Mercedes. The design also features a fiberglass nose inspired by the F1 circuit and if that can’t make it go any faster, I doubt painting it red will help much either. Terrific eye-candy, but we all know hubless wheels are the future.

Source:
Daily Mail

Here’s a novel concept that manages to merge old tech with new, in a very exciting and beneficial way. Called the Cargonaut, it is essentially a flying robotic servant that will courier everything from letters, to luggage, to groceries across town for you to help lighten your load.

Designed by Matthias Schmiedbauer, the Cargonaut seems to be a modern take on the old courier pigeon method of message delivery. This high-tech version would naturally be more powerful to allow for heavier payloads like parcels to be hauled across town and if widely adopted, could possibly work out cheaper than using traditional mail services. Think about how much a stamp costs nowadays! If you owned one of these, how much do you think a bit of ‘leccy would set you back?

Of course, this little rotor-tailed aviator could do much more than mere mail delivery, potentially helping to free up room on subways around the world, as people transport luggage through the air instead. Now, if only you could use it to transport children, it would get rid of all those huge strollers on the Underground.

It seems like a grand idea and could be used as a tentative step forward towards flying cars. Hey, maybe we could repurpose all our old, unused chimneys as delivery chutes. Now that would be a future I’d like to see.

Sources:
Coroflot via AutoMotto

Power-strips are handy little devices, but they are by no means perfect. Their rigid shape often means having to rearrange furniture in order to work with their design limitations. Well, this concept by designer Jeff Carter aims to change all that. Called Movable Power, it is a friendly-looking power-strip that can be shaped to fit around furniture in a similar fashion to cabling.

This novel power-board design doesn’t seem as if it would be all that difficult to manufacture and would be very handy around the home. The only thing that could top this, is if each plug were somehow detachable – sometimes you need a number of plugs (like around a workstation) and others you don’t. If we could get these in modules, we could easily add or remove plugs as our requirements change.

Lets hope we start seeing products like this on the market soon – just like with the Flexicord shapable cables, they’re attractive, they’re innovative, so why not?

Sources:
Yanko Design via Engadget

Asus is showing off a “Community Designed PC” concept at CeBIT 2009, that incorporates two touchscreen panels in a “FlipBook” style design. The dual-panel notebook aims to offer a more flexible and intuitive working space by incorporating a virtual touchpad and keyboard, as well as gesture control and handwriting recognition.

The design would be ideal for use as a backlit e-book reader, which reminds me of the detachable dual-display reader we saw back in June. Pages could be turned using intuitive gestures (above) that more closely resemble traditional book reading – something sadly lacking on devices like Amazon’s Kindle.

Apart from this, Asus envisions its use as a laptop or a multimedia hub and notes that the displays could be combined, to allow for full widescreen entertainment on-the-go.

For other interesting community-based designs, be sure to check out WEPC.com, a joint effort between Asus and Intel. Once signed up you can submit feedback on designs of other users, or even submit your own.

Sources:
Asus (Press Release) via TechRadar

It’s not like we haven’t seen ocean inspired concepts or flying cars before, but this design by Kazim Doku called the Audi Shark really gets your motor running. Seemingly inspired by the sleek yet powerful appearance of sharks, it won the 2008 Desire Design Competition at Domus Academy and looks like it would be just at home under the water, as well as in the sky for which it was designed.

The Audi Shark’s most striking feature is arguably the headlights and taillights, which are simply transparent tubes with embedded LEDs. Not too practical for the real world, but hey, neither are hover cars…yet.

The Shark has enough room inside to seat two and comes complete with a set of horizontal fins on the back to complete the look…or perhaps even trigger a modernized 50s/60s fin revival.

Wondering how you get in? Check out the video below.

Sources:
CarBodyDesign via LikeCool

Using rechargeable batteries is a great way to cut down on the waste we produce and to save money at the same time, but you need to be organized and keep a charger on hand. Well, inventor Knut Karlsen has come up with a clever solution that crosses a solar charger and a rechargeable cell to make, what is essentially, a self-charging battery.

These simple, yet novel prototypes are made up of regular C-size NiMH rechargeable cells that are wrapped with flexible photovoltaic panels. Using some flat wires and a conductive silver pen, the designer made a connection from the solar panel to the battery on each that allows for a trickle charge. He has ideas to improve the design further too, like adding a charge-level gauge and capacitors for more efficient charging, but they would be difficult to implement without increasing the battery’s size.

This idea has a lot of potential for low-powered gadgets that require infrequent battery changes, like wall clocks or remote controls. In these applications, power could be sustained with ambient light alone, where as higher-powered devices would probably require direct sunlight – something that batteries are never supposed to see, due to a risk of explosion.

It would certainly be useful for prolonging battery life in many devices and could be an option perhaps for electronics designers dabbling in solar tech, like with the recent photovoltaic phones from Samsung and LG.

Sources:
BareKnut via Inhabitat