Gizmodo: dutch

Office Cubicle for the Road Saves Precious Commuting Time

Danny Allen — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 11:40:00 EDT

You're looking at the Slow Car concept from Jurgen Bey, one of the Netherlands' most respected high-end home furniture designers. He's taken the humble office cubicle, and slapped it on a 25mph scooter. Talk about being chained to your desk.

He imagines environments like campuses and airports offering the vehicle, because it lets folks stay productive at a desk, in privacy, without walking. He says by limiting the speed, users should feel a sense of calm at being able to max out the throttle, something we don't always get to do in cars.

Personally, being boxed makes me feel pretty far from calm. Fail. Check out the vid and decide for yourself. [Jurgen Bey via Mocoloco]

The Citadel: The World's First Floating Apartment Complex

Dan Nosowitz — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 01:00:00 EDT

Since Holland is mostly under sea level, keeping houses from flooding is a constant problem. This concept fixes that problem by just having an apartment complex that floats.

The Citadel is the residential part of the "New Water" complex, which tries to embrace Holland's waterworld-ness instead of fighting it. It'll have a floating road to the mainland as well as plenty of boat docks for its 60 units. Apparently it'll also be 25% more energy-efficient than an equivalent complex on land by using the surrounding water for cooling. It looks kind of crazy, but the sort of crazy that could actually work. [Inhabitat]

Taga Stroller/Bike Combo Might Launch Your Tots Into the Stratosphere

Jack Loftus — Sun, 10 May 2009 17:00:00 EDT

Bike, stroller or wheeled trebuchet? Whatever it is, the Taga takes kid-carrying in a new direction. I just can't help thinking those two smiling kids are one wheelie away from joining the ISS.

Luckily for the kids, the Taga trike stroller comes with a range of custom safety options and accessories, like the pictured double child seat, car seat, basket, and wooden double-seat trailer. Oh, and it transforms from trike to stroller in a few seconds, which is actually incredibly innovative and convenient. I'm going to go ahead and assume you take little Timmy out first.

The 44 to 64-lb. Taga kit tops off with a Shimano gear system (found on most mid-range bicycles), as well as front, rear, and parking brakes. The whole kit folds down to car trunk size. Again, take Timmy out first.

Europe only for now with a sky-high $2,500 base price. [Taga via Treehugger via DVICE]

Pot-Sniffing Helicopters Put the Illicit Dutch Agricultural Industry at Risk

Dan Nosowitz — Sat, 02 May 2009 13:00:00 EDT

The unmanned mini-helicopter has been dubbed the "Canna Chopper," and has been put to use sniffing out illegal grow operations in the Netherlands. Apparently only 10% of Dutch-grown pot is legal. Who knew?

The Canna Chopper boasts odor and video sensors to find pot fields from the air, and on its first trip it rounded up seven outlaw farmers and several kilos of product, so looks like it's reasonably effective. Effective at being no fun. [Dutch Daily News via DVICE]

Dutch Arcade Cabinet Carved From a Tree

Dan Nosowitz — Sat, 02 May 2009 10:00:00 EDT

Looks like "boom" means "tree" in Dutch, rhyming with foam rather than broom, but this is still a pretty sweet art piece. Check out the "wiring" on the back after the jump. [Uitschot va BoingBoingGadgets]

Dutch Architects Envision Mind-Bending Virtual Realities Using Photoshop

Jack Loftus — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 11:00:00 EDT

Imagine screaming down the freeway sometime in the near future and seeing this loop rushing forward to fill your windshield. Or, changing gears, what if commercial airlines flew their birds in a V formation, like birds? That's what Dutch design firm NL did recently using Photoshop, everyday architecture, and a little imagination that was perhaps inspired by a certain leaf available in special Dutch tea rooms. Google Tree? Energy-producing monuments? Sure thing!

[dezeen]

Delay Clock Tells Time, Looks Pretty and Pointy

Dan Nosowitz — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 21:30:15 EDT

The Delay Clock looks complex and threatening, but if you take a look at where the three circles (hour, minute and second) meet near the middle, you can find the time pretty easily. This arty Dutch clock is made from stainless steel and aluminum, and its cogs are a more essential part of the design than others we've seen. I really hope it doesn't have an alarm, because smacking this thing in the morning would be the rudest wakeup ever. This danger to life, internal organ, and limb from Studio Bloomm is priced at a hefty $1,962. [DVICE]

RFID Robotic Chair Follows You Around For Constant Seating

Jason Chen — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 14:00:00 EDT

Dutch designer Jelte van Geest's RFID-enabled robotic chair is for Openbare Bibliotheek Endhoven, and it's fantastic. What you do is swipe your RFID-enabled library card in front of the chair's sensor, which then follows you (or your card) around the library so you always have somewhere to sit. Once you cross a line near the checkout counter, the chair returns back to its docking station to re-juice and get ready for the next guy's ass. The video after the jump illustrates how it works. [Momeld via Technabob via DVICE]

We'd totally want one of these around the house until we realized that most of our day is spent sitting on something or other anyway, so this robot would just spin around getting jealous before pitifully running out of power.

Flame Bot Has Manliest Walk in Robot Kingdom

Wilson Rothman — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Next Friday, a Dutch robotics researcher named Daan Hobbelen at TU Delft will be getting his PhD for building a robot named Flame. What's the big deal? you robo-saturated Giz readers ask. Flame has been built to walk like a man, using human-based principles that strike fear in the hearts of other robotics experts. UPDATE and BONUS VIDEO BELOW!!

The essential but counterintuitive concept is that, to walk like a man, the robot must "fall forward." Flame derives information from its "organ of balance," which it then applies to things like stance using seven motors. Springs in its joints make the movements smoother, as you see in the video above.

Flame will be used not only to further robotics research, but to help diagnose orthopedic problems in humans as well. Me, I'm waiting for Flame 2. Word on the street is that it'll be able to pull off, yes that's right, the Electric Boogaloo. [PhysOrg via KurzweilAI]

UPDATE: A reader named Jerry just told me about an earlier bipedal robot from Cornell that supposedly used the same principles to walk. As you can see in the video below, on the upside, it has arms; on the downside, it looks like it's been using the arms to do the 12-oz curl if you know what I'm sayin'. Thanks Jerry!

Soaring Spybot RoboSwift Mocks Real Birds (and Pays the Price)

Wilson Rothman — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 09:25:00 EST

The RoboSwift, built by researchers at the Delft University of Technology, is among the first flying machines with a "morphing" wing sweep. As you'll see in the video below, its wings reduce in surface area when pulled back to limit drag, the way the wings of actual fast-flying swifts do. Unlike the real birds, however, the RoboSwift is designed to spy on you.

Inside its small body (20" wingspan), there's a low-resolution wireless camera. The idea, already thought to be a good one by Dutch police, is that RoboSwift can be used to surreptitiously hover over crime scenes or football riots. People below, if they did look up, would only to see a soaring, swooping bird of no consequence.

The dudes from Delft are so proud of their little 3-oz. beast, they reckon they can even use it to observe other birds without being noticed—they just have to find a way to fold up that propeller once RoboSwift is aloft. Stashing that long-ass antenna on the end of the tail might help too.

In the video below you can see it soar, spy—and crash into a tree—like a true master of espionage. [LiveScience; Reuters]

Conference Bike: Steering by Porsche, Idea by Crackpot Dutchman

www.gizmodo.com — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 07:03:45 EDT

I'm off. Leaving. So, tatty-bye. Working for Gizmodo has been fun, but I have a higher calling, thanks to the discovery of this Conference Bike, invented by Eric Staller in 1991. The 15 mph behemoth only cost me $10,000 and I am going to travel to Guyana on a mission to save the indigenous orange-breasted marmoset from the nation's cooking pots. I have enlisted the help of Charlie, Jason, Brian, Travis, Jesus and Adam to help me pedal the Save The Orange-Breasted Marmoset Campaign to certain success.

UPDATE: They now say they're not coming with me. And seeing as I can't pedal this ridiculous piece of weirdosity by myself (Apparently I need a driver's license to operate it, and the cops took that away from me last year after I tried to run down my fifth husband with the lawn mower) I'll think I'll stay here, if that's all right with you. – Ad Dugdale

Product Page [Conference Bike via Daily Mail]