Developed by engineers at Hiroshima University in Japan, this mobile folding ‘scissor bridge’ platform can carry people, cars and supplies across gaps in emergencies, like earthquakes, for instances, for which its country of origin is all too well known.

Designed for portability and inspired by origami, the steel structure can be deployed to help deal with landslides and floods that wipe out area bridges, or new voids that form when the ground shifts. The entire system fits on the back of a typical flatbed truck, able to make its way along conventional roads with typical size and span limitations. Its creators claim it is  “the world’s fastest, largest, strongest, and lightest expanding temporary bridge.”

Dr. Ichiro Ario and his team created the Mobile Bridge Version 4.0 as a prototype, but even this draft version is fully functional and able to unfold and refold in less than 5 minutes (though setting it up still takes a full half hour). While it could be a boon in emergency situations, the same system could be used to temporarily replace or work around bridges that are being repaired or rebuilt as well. As compact and efficient as the current design already is, no doubt additional iterations will also help improve it on all fronts.

The post Origami Crossing: Portable Flat-Pack Accordion Bridge first appeared on Gajitz.

If you happen to be flying out of Düsseldorf Airport soon, you might be pleased to discover that there is a new “employee” there who will make your parking experience much more pleasant. Ray is a robotic car parking concierge system invented by Serva Transport Systems to eliminate the headaches that come from both parking your car at the airport and picking it up when you come home.

When you arrive at the airport, Ray takes a scan of your vehicle and stores a 3D profile of its size. It then gently lifts the car via forklift-like platforms and moves it to an available parking spot. Because the parking lot doesn’t need to accommodate human drivers with their sloppy parking and careless door opening, twice as many cars can be packed into the same area.

The Ray system is smart enough to arrange the cars’ parking positions by the return date of the cars’ owners. Those arriving at the airport soonest will have their cars parked near the front of the lot so they are quickly and easily accessible. The system keeps track of your flight so when you walk out of the terminal your car is sitting there waiting for you.

If you decide to hang around in the airport for a while (or if you’re stuck in customs or other such nonsense), you can use a special app to tell Ray to chill for a while and leave your car where it is until you’re ready to get it. (The video above is in German, but you can see the system in use.)

Even if you’re the kind of driver who considers your car a prized possession, Serva Transport claims that their system is unfailingly gentle on vehicles. The integrated sensors and radar guidance systems ensure that you’ll never leave the airport to find a nasty dent or scratch on your car.

Unlike other robotics-based parking systems, Ray can be installed in a regular parking lot with no special infrastructure required. The robots roll along autonomously on the pavement using laser guidance, not metal tracks or chains. As such, an existing parking garage can easily and inexpensively be converted. The system is currently being tested at Düsseldorf. After testing and feedback from users, Serva and the airport will decide whether to expand the program.

The post Ray Wants to Park Your Car: Dusseldorf’s Robotic Valet first appeared on Gajitz.

Remember the excitement of a loose tooth? There was always the promise of a few coins or a special toy from the Tooth Fairy when a tooth finally came out. Today’s youth are savvier than ever, and fooling them with a fairy that flies around to all of the houses in the world every night might not be as easy as it used to be. So one awesome dad built a Pneumatic Transport Tube for the Tooth Fairy…and all kinds of other beloved childhood gift-giving creatures.

Jeff Highsmith, maker and builder extraordinaire, used a regular household vacuum, some flexible PVC pipe and a Raspberry Pi to “hack” his house. The pipes run through the walls and into another part of the house. On the sending side, the child inserts a baby tooth and then instructs the transport system to carry the tooth to the Tooth Fairy. The iPhone interface shows that the tooth is traveling to its destination, being inspected, and ultimately being approved. The next step is for the “Tooth Fairy” to send a special treat back.

The schematics, plans and explanation (all available over at Makezine) all make it sound relatively easy to set up a pneumatic tube system in your own home. It doesn’t have to be kid-oriented, either – adults would surely have just as much fun sending things to one another through the walls. Highsmith suggests that you avoid actually cutting into your walls if you don’t have a fair amount of home building or remodeling experience. Fair enough, but we still want to make an automated system that carries beers straight from the fridge to the easy chair.

The post Magic Mail: Pneumatic Tube Setup for Tooth Fairy Transport first appeared on Gajitz.

Technology has been good to modern humans, and that has never been more obvious than when we look at the wealth of transforming stuff out there. The Transporter Boat from Better Outdoors is another of those amazing shape-shifting objects – and one that we kind of want, like, right now.

The Transporter starts out as a nondescript plastic box. You can throw it in the back of a pickup, strap it to the luggage rack of your car, or even tow it behind an RV on a special trailer (sold separately, of course). But when you get to the water, that’s when the magic happens.

The box unfolds into a boat that can hold either four or seven people, depending on the version you buy. The entire transformation process takes only about ten minutes and requires no tools. Everything that you need to take onto the lake with you can fit into the pontoons, which are conveniently insulated so your sodas and beers stay refreshingly cold.

Although with most small boats sitting on the outer edge will cause the boat to flip over and you to be unceremoniously dumped into the water, the Transporter boats are built to be ultra-stable. The padded outer edges are actually the pontoons, and sitting on them won’t cause any instability.

Optional accessories like motors are available for both sizes of Transporters. Because the boats are modular, you can buy the big one and only choose to use one compartment – or buy the small one now and add on the other compartment later. When the Transporter is folded up into box form, everything you need – motor, life jackets, paddles – all fits into the box itself so you don’t have to worry about carrying multiple armfuls from the truck to the water.

The post Ultra-Transportable Boat Goes from Box to Afloat in 10 Mins first appeared on Gajitz.

Futuristic city car concepts often involve reinventing the wheel, as it were: changing the entire infrastructure of roads to suit a new generation of smaller, more eco-friendly cars. While that would be a handy solution to some problems, it’s completely impractical. The cost to replace all of the streets in the world would be outrageously prohibitive. So we like to see concept cars that take the existing infrastructure and do something new and interesting within it.

Brazilian designer Rafael Fernando da Silva came up with a concept he calls the “FLUR,” a two-seater city car that would seek to take some of the stress out of driving and some of the traffic out of the city. The ultra-narrow car would take up only half a lane of traffic, letting two FLURs drive side-by-side in one lane.

All of the systems in the FLUR concept are electronic, taking some of the decision-making off of the driver. There’s no engine to speak of since the FLUR is electric and driven by small motors in each wheel. The passenger would have to sit behind the driver rather than beside him as we’re used to now, but the back seat moves as needed and is foldable to provide extra storage room when there are no passengers. Overall, it would probably take a bit of adjustment to driving etiquette for cities to accommodate any ultra-small, lightweight car, but cities all over the world are already well on the way.

The post Double Up! Ultra-Efficient Electric Car Fits Two to a City Lane first appeared on Gajitz.