Harmony and Acoustic Research Project or HARP is a weather-proof communal musical instrument specially designed for urban parks. Primary goal of this project was to harness the power of music as a universal language which is the most effective way to unite people. This circular innovative musical instrument has a 10 feet circle which encourages the act of interaction and creates a sense of closeness. Installation of this instrument was divided into 4 different quadrants, each with individual sound instruments, electric organ, piano, steel drum and chimes were the initial selection.
However, these sounds are exchangeable and can be adjusted to a range of instruments like digeridoos, sitars or even vocal samples. To coincide with the park’s environment, HARP’s sound output is restricted to 75 decibels, so that only the users and those passing nearby would be able to hear its music. The ultimate vision of HARP is to get it installed in every urban parks all over the world and then be remotely connected through satellite to allow international musical association among its users.
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London Garden is a concept car free zone in downtown London allowing bicycles and busses only as transportation means. In this connection, the designers have created an innovative transportation system combining a bike and a bus including the supporting infrastructure.
The bicycle is designed to generate energy when riding and this energy can be used as currency to pay for your bus rides. The bike electronically folds into the bus seat storage mode for space and weight efficiency and to fit on the bike stand. Bike stands can be found at the bus stops where the bikes will be stored securely in order to collect energy from the sun and wind. Moreover, it contributes energy to the bus system that was generated during riding and stored in inner batteries. Finally, the energy will be accumulated from all the bus stops into the London Garden network system, which is the Universal Electricity Network of this concept.
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Braille phone is a universal cellular phone concept that is able to produce Braille code in a particular part of it by using Electric Active Plastic to make it usable for visually handicapped people. The phone has been designed in a simple and easy to use manner and looks like a television remote control. The Braille area provides all the information that a traditional screen of a cell phone displays so that visually impaired people can read them by touching it. It provides letter blocks in two by three dot matrixes and by using this principle on buttons, visually challenged people can easily create or read text messages. This braille phone just won Red Dot Awards 2009.
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Usual mobile phones contain a small dot on the 5 key that allows the user to press the other keys even without looking on the keypad. Thus, even blind people can write text messages with conventional mobile phones. But what will they do when it comes to reading a text message? The Universal Phone concept is specially designed for blind people, but sighted people can also use it even efficiently. The keypad contains thousands of micro pins that are lowered and raised according to different modes. Moreover, these pins transforms in a Braille platform to facilitate blind people with reading and writing text messages.
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BlueZero is the latest addition of the eco-friendly series cars by world renowned Mercedes-Benz. The main inspiration came from the idea of creating a vehicle that is affordable and eco-conscious, and can offer a multitude of platforms for daily use. Keeping the sandwich floor concept of Mercedes in mind, the structure of this concept car allows three different platforms to realize: first one is an E-Cell with battery, secondly E-Cell plus with gasoline and battery and the last one is an F-Cell with hydrogen. This concept allows the powertrain to be moved into the floor cells in the event of a front-end collision. This innovative is not only a great safety solution but also will help creating a universal platform.
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