The Zero House is a small, prefabricated house that can be easily shipped and quickly erected. It features a full kitchen, bath, and all elements necessary to comfortably support four adults. What sets the Zero House apart from other prefabricated structures on the market, however, is its ability to operate independently, without the need for any external utility or waste disposal connections. High-efficiency solar panels produce power and store it in an onboard bank of batteries. A rainwater collection plane gathers and diverts water into a cistern and all organic waste is processed in a compost unit located beneath the house. Although the house could be prefabricated and transported to a site on two flatbed trailers, currently only customized versions built on-site are in the planning.

Some things never change. Even with the advent of digital cameras, we are still banging our heads together when more than two people want to look at a picture. A small print or an even smaller screen at the back of a camera are just not made to show the latest snapshots to a group. And who wants to lug around a clunky projector all the time? That’s what the engineers at Nikon asked themselves and so they came up with their new Coolpix S1000pj. The compact digital camera is pretty slender, weighs as little as 155 grams and brings its own built-in projector. The camera projects favourite photos or movie clips onto any flat surface at up to one metre in size. Imagine lying in your hotel bed after a long day of sightseeing and looking at the latest shots. Or a party with an instant replay in the living room of what’s going on in the kitchen. Unfortunately, the projector has a very low brightness of only 10 lumen and the room has to be pretty dark. But at least we won’t be banging heads together anymore.

Bluetooth headsets are mostly worn by men; looking like a cyborg just isn’t a lady’s thing. Besides, these devices often interfere with earrings. So why not build a headset that looks like an earring itself. Or a ring. Or both. Like Hybratech’s Orb, the wireless earpiece finger ring. The Orb is a finger-worn ring that twists open to become a comfortable, secure and sophisticated Bluetooth headset for hands-free calling. Bone conducting technology delivers high-quality sound without the discomfort of placing a device inside the ear. A deluxe edition will feature a flexible OLED screen to keep caller ID and calendar reminders quite literally on-hand. It also offers voice-to-text for effortless communication without taking the ring off the finger. So the next time a wife takes off her ring, she might not want a divorce, but just call the kids.

Kids love their unicycles, no question. But once they grow older they want something more substantial, something that has an engine. Aleksander Polutnik from Slovenia might have had the right idea at the right time when he came up with his Enicycle, an electric powered, self-balancing unicycle. Riding the Enicycle is much easier than mastering a unicycle because a gyroscope and a built-in computer constantly measure the vertical angle and accelerate or decelerate the wheel to balance the vehicle. The speed is controlled by leaning forwards or backwards. Steering is done by pushing the footrest on either side. This takes some time getting used to, but the inventor is promising a learning time of less than 30 minutes. Small, light and with a range of up to 30 kilometres, the Enicycle has the potential to become the poor man’s Segway.

Ion engines are the latest fashion in space exploration. Instead of giving a spacecraft a short, big kick with lots of chemical propellant, these engines push it gently with a very light but constant beam of ions using very little fuel. So far, the choice has been either fast and heavy or light and slow. But Ad Astra Rocket Company, founded by a former space shuttle astronaut, is going to change that. Their VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) is driven by electromagnetic waves and has no physical material electrodes in contact with the hot plasma like current ion engines. In a first stage, Argon is heated to a plasma which, after passing a superconducting magnet, is then accelerated by a radio frequency generator in the second stage. This allows for a much higher power density – up to a hundred times if powered by a nuclear reactor. Smaller VASIMR engines could push the ISS back into orbit or operate as a tug between the Earth and the Moon while large engines could shorten the trip to Mars from six to a little over one month. First tests of the engine were promising.

Moments like this have become very rare. When, during my last visit to the Hannover Fair, I asked the representative at the Danfoss booth what the shiny, cloth-like material they were presenting was good for, he simply answered: “You tell me.” Obviously, the engineers had been given the chance to develop a unique material without a specific application in mind. The material in question is a very thin - only 60 micrometres - silicone film covered on both sides with an even thinner layer of silver. It’s called DEAP or Di-electric Electro Active Polymer. Such a “flexible capacitor” can be used as an actuator when a high voltage is applied to its electrodes while at the same time acting as a sensor since any deformation changes the capacity of the film. It can even be used to convert mechanical energy into electrical. The film’s developers envision applications in industries such as robotics, automotive, clothing, health care, toys or electronics. To get more ideas they organised a competition for devices using DEAP. Quite a compelling challenge - isn’t the chance to play with a completely new material another one of these rare moments in engineering?

The average motor biker is almost 50 years old and so, for the younger generations, riding a motorbike is as uncool as it can get. Not any longer. The Mission One not only looks hot, it’s also following the latest fashion of dispensing with the combustion engine and replacing it with a high torque electric motor. Its designer Forrest North has something of an e-reputation: Before he launched his motorbike company, he was part of the Solar Car Racing Team at Stanford and worked for Tesla. Together with Ducati and a few Silicon Valley companies he realised his dream: A motorbike powered by Lithium-Ion batteries and a liquid-cooled AC motor with a 135 Nm torque, reaching a top speed of 240 km/h. To show that his motorbike isn’t a science project but able to compete with conventional bikes, he registered it in the first zero emission motorbike race on the Isle of Man. Bikes like the Mission One might finally be the key to rejuvenate the aging biker scene.

Trainees of Mercedes-Benz have built a roadster with fuel cell drive which uniquely combines state-of-the-art technologies with the history of vehicle construction. As an allusion to the Benz Patent Motor Car from 1886, the vehicle is fitted with large spoked wheels. Moreover, the F-CELL Roadster incorporates stylistic elements from diverse eras of automotive history, such as the carbon-fibre bucket seats with hand-stitched leather covers and the distinctively styled fibreglass front section, based on the component from the Formula One racing bolides. The F-CELL Roadster is controlled with drive-by-wire technology, and a joystick takes the place of a conventional steering wheel. The vehicle is powered by the emission-free fuel cell system located at the rear. With a power rating of 1.2 kW the F-CELL Roadster reaches a top speed of 25 km/h and has an operating range of up to 350 km.

It’s called ‘luggage’ because we have to lug it around. For millennia travellers struggled with bulky boxes until in the 1980s someone finally had the idea to mount roller-skate wheels under these boxes. But the relief was only temporary - with all these laptops, batteries and the plethora of charging devices our luggage is heavier than ever and so we are struggling once more. Time for the world’s first power-assisted suitcase with motors built into the wheels and force sensors in the handle. The Live Luggage’s control system monitors the sensors and provides an output to the in-wheel motors that increase or decrease the torque provided by the wheels. This torque compensates by giving an equal and opposite force to that applied to the handle. The technology is clever enough to only power up the wheels when the traveller is struggling. It even has a capacitor that recharges the batteries when going down hill. The only disadvantage is that you have to carry even another charging device - the one for your luggage.

The "Go With the Flo" toilet is an ergonomic, sustainable design concept that functions like a squat toilet. Using the toilet is akin to yoga - by building and strengthening abdominal and back muscles. Only one-half to one gallon of reused water from hand washing is used for flushing. To flush water from the tanks to the toilet employs an electromagnetic ball valve that uses electromagnets. It is also free of mechanical parts. The toilet is fully self-sustaining and independent of electric power. By completely redesigning the toilet, the team from the Arizona State University College of Design changed the concept of a typical bathroom experience, which hasn’t really changed in over 100 years of use.

catch a phrase

to go with the flow = mit dem Strom schwimmen

If you, go with the flow, you accept how things are and you go along with what everyone else wants to do.

Carmakers are not very creative people. For more than 100 years the basics haven't changed much: four wheels bolted to a suspension and brake assembly and driven by a combustion engine. How boring. Strangely enough, it's a tyre manufacturer who, by reinventing the wheel, might change the way we build cars. Michelin's Active Wheel is a unit that houses a 30-Kilowatt electric motor, brake disc and calliper and an electric suspension all integrated into a wheel rim with a low-profile tyre. Just bolt it to a frame, plug in a battery and off you go. Suddenly, building a car is a easy as attaching pushchair wheel to a soapbox. The possibilities are mind boggling. Sadly enough, the design of the Heuliez WILL car, one of the first cars with the new Active Wheel, is rather classic to say the least. Seems that it's time to reinvent the car now.

*well heeled = rich, well equipped There are two sources for this expression: At cockfights the cocks with large and sharp heels or spurs were most likely to win. On the other hand, people with money could afford good-quality shoes with heels.

One way to overcome the car manufacturer's crisis is to create fascinating products. Lotus has always excelled in this discipline, but with the CIV they have outdone themselves. The Concept Ice Vehicle looks like it's straight out of an old James Bond movie but is in fact a real vehicle especially designed for the Moon-Regan Trans Antarctic Expedition. The three-legged snowmobile is driven by a rear mounted propeller. The engine is a supercharged BMW motorcycle engine which has been adapted to run on bio ethanol. Among the many features added by Q, who seems to be working at Lotus after his retirement from the series, are a spiked foot for emergency breaking, GPS and an ice-penetrating radar system to warn of dangers on and below the surface, such as hidden crevasses.

It seems that China isn't the only country copying the Transrapid. New Zealand is closing in, too. But being a sportive and outdoor-loving nation, the Kiwi's answer to the German monorail is much smaller, much lighter and, above all, much more fun. The Shweeb - even the name is a German rip-off - is a human-powered monorail and part of the Agroventures fun-park near Rotorua, NZ. Enclosed in a perspex cabin hanging from a monorail riders can race around the 200-metre long round course against time or each other. The pedalpowered vehicles have seven gears and reach speeds of up to 50 kilometres per hour. Although currently nothing more than a gimmick at a fun fair, designer Geoffrey Barnett envisions his system as a public transport in the cities of the future.

Rotating restaurants on top of radio towers or skyscrapers are so yesterday. The latest trend in mobile architecture is David Fisher's Dynamic Tower. Each floor of the Dynamic Tower rotates independently to create a building that constantly changes its shape and appearance, resulting in a unique and ever evolving architectural landmark. The Dynamic Tower is environmentally friendly and the first building designed to be completely self-powered, with wind turbines positioned horizontally between each floor, and photovoltaic cells placed on the roof of each rotating floor to produce solar energy. The Dynamic Tower will also be the first skyscraper to be built entirely from prefabricated parts that are custom made in a workshop and then installed on site.

University of Florida mechanical and aerospace engineering associate professor Subrata Roy has submitted a patent application for a circular, spinning aircraft design reminiscent of the spaceships seen in countless Hollywood films. Roy, however, calls his design a "wingless electromagnetic air vehicle," or WEAV. The vehicle will be powered by a phenomenon called magnetohydrodynamics, or the force created when a current or a magnetic field is passed through a conducting fluid. The conducting fluid will be created by electrodes that cover each of the vehicle's surfaces and ionize the surrounding air into plasma. The force created by passing an electrical current through this plasma pushes around the surrounding air, and that swirling air creates lift and momentum and provides stability against wind gusts. The vehicle will have no moving parts. Towering obstacles stand between the blueprint and liftoff. The power source needs to be extremely lightweight yet still produce enough power to generate the necessary plasma.