Pluggage, the brainchild of ITP student Ohad Folman, is a piece of carry-on luggage with a built-in battery/inverter and a solar panel that’s capable of charging mobile devices as the bag is rolled or exposed to direct sunlight.
The luggage is not your everyday pie-in-the-sky concept; Folman has already created a proof-of-concept prototype using a Burton bag with a Duracell PowerSource Mobile 100 battery back, a stepper motor and a Burton SolarRolls panel. Folman claims that the battery charges in about two hours with an average walking pace, and should be able to power a laptop for about an hour and a half. There are a few obvious downsides to the concept: I don’t know many people who are willing to walk around for two hours, hauling a suitcase behind them. Using Pluggage would also force a user to avoid those moving walkways at the airport, one of life’s simple joys.
So far, Pulman hasn’t had much luck getting the big luggage makers to incorporate his idea so he’s currently looking to get started with a smaller bag maker. [Boing Boing Gadgets]
