Polish design students have come up with a truly revolutionary design for the humble wheelchair. It looks like a pretty mean machine of war, and is driven by muscular force. The addition of a gyroscope mounted just below the seat enables the wheelchair to remain vertical on just two wheels (sorta like a seated Segway). These wheels measure 26″ in diameter, making them larger than those found on my car. Looks pretty neat - now the world will just have to wait for a working version to be released.

Source: Medgadget

Signs are pointing towards a brand new Mighty Mouse from Apple, and it is highly likely that this new peripheral will not be any other ordinary mouse. No sir, according to a US patent that was filed by Apple early last year, this new desktop mouse will utilize part of the multi-touch concept that is currently found on the iPhone. This concept will turn the humble mouse into a hand controller of sorts, where an optical sensor integrated within the mouse will be able to map the surface and recognize contact from the user’s hand according to the changes experienced in the image. Read on after the jump for more about the inner workings of this new mouse.

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German researchers have successfully worked on a bionic robot arm after studying an elephant’s trunk as the basis of its design. The technology applied is hoped to be used within a couple of years in therapy, restoring the use of injured limbs while producing low cost, flexible prosthetic devices. Since ordinary robotic arms are way too expensive to build and dangerous to operate for the layman, this bionic robot arm dubbed ISELLA will be pocket friendly and gentle on humans. As mentioned, an elephant’s trunk was the inspiration for its design, and hence let’s delve into it further after the jump.

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Steorn was supposed to unveil their “free energy” technology to the public today with a demo video on their website. “Technical difficulties” mean it’s now coming tomorrow (5 July). According to the Irish newspaper RTE the device is also going on public show at the Kinetica museum in London where we can all gaze at it from behind glass and try to figure out how it works. Personally I can’t wait!

Remembering all your passwords can be a pretty tricky process, don’t you think? Gone are the days where all you needed to have in your mind was your Social Security number, a couple of phone numbers (landed lines mind you), and perhaps a birthday or two. These days, you have tons of email addresses to attend to (both corporate and personal), various logins for a whole ton of websites as well as PIN codes and security passwords in buildings. This is just pure information overload, but thankfully there is the Dynahand system that aims to make logging into websites a wee bit easier.

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There are some personal wind turbines floating around, but they are very expensive, heavy and quite inefficient. Ben Storan, an Irish Industrial Design student, thought there could be more done. So he made something different. Something that has brought him the 2007 Sustainability Award, £3000 and a lot of publicity.

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Shopping can be very therapeutic for those who are going through difficult moments in life, but the consequences could plunge the shopper into further depression with mounting debts that never seem to be paid off. The futuristic credit card concept designed by Jacob Palmborg aims to prevent overspending, featuring a screen that tells you all your current economic information including account balances as well as how much your spending spree will affect your future. It is linked to a central system via RFID and stores no data for security reasons. A biometric sensor also lets no one else but the owner access the confidential data within. When will we see this arrive in the real world? Probably never as banks thrive on charging insanely high interest rates on debts.

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Developed by California architect Gregg Fleishman comes the DH1 Disaster House, a shed that can be put up in an afternoon. It’s a deceptively simple idea. Create a house that one doesn’t need a single nail to build. That’s because the home was designed with tabs that make it more a 3D puzzle to put together.

Initially designed to aid hurricane victims who have lost their homes, this alternative is designed to be a 14′ square shed built about 30″ off the ground. All one needs to do is unpack the stack of European birch plywood, put them together via the slots, and in about an hour, you have an instant place to hang your hat – porch included.

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