Pedal-powered
While Gizmag was at the Green Air Show in Paris, designer Minh-Lôc Truong and high flyer Stéphane Rousson showed us a new pedal-powered personal submarine they've been working on. The streamlined carbon fiber Scubster is currently being built in the south of France by Rousson and a team of University engineers to designs supplied by Truong. The first test run of the 13.78 x 7.87 x 4.92 feet yellow submarine will hopefully take place by the end of June in the Mediterranean waters off the coast of Nice. Read More
If the stereotype is to be believed, guys who use gas lawn mowers would love to someday own a riding mower - after all, few things could be more macho than doing circuits of your lawn sitting on a miniature tractor with spinning blades on the bottom. But what about suburbanites who use non-polluting push mowers? What bigger and better type of lawn mower can they fantasize about? Until recently, that would have been a hard question to answer, but now the solution is here... yes, it’s the human-powered Mow Cycle riding mower. Read More
For most of us, the world deep below the ocean’s surface remains a place we have only had the pleasure to experience vicariously, primarily through watching nature documentaries. It's not as if we can just hop in a submarine and go take a look. Well, perhaps we can, if a Russian company's plan to market a two-seater submarine driven by pedal power to the tourist industry is successful. The new underwater vehicle (UV) from Marine Innovation Technologies (MIT) will not only be cheaper to buy and run than existing submersibles, it will be simpler to operate, requiring no special training or expertise. Read More
May 1, 2008 Those magnificent men in their flying machines... the first purely human-powered aircraft, the Gossamer Albatross, crossed the English Channel in 1979 with its pilot Bryan Allen pedaling the feather-light winged plane across in two hours to collect the UKP100,000 Kremer prize. This feat caught the imagination of French cyclist Stephane Rousson, who this European summer will attempt to cycle across the Channel pedaling a twin-tilting-rotor helium airship. It's the first pedal-powered airship of its kind, complete with very delicate aerodynamics that mean Rousson will need to chance upon one of the three windless days of the year if he hopes to stay up-diddly-up-up and not go crashing down-diddly-own-down. Read More
Pedal-powered supercomputer: MIT Cycling team sets new record
December 15, 2007 Cyclists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have set a new world record in Human Powered Computation (HPC). The team of 10 used bicycles to power a SiCortex SC648 supercomputer drawing 1.2 kilowatts of electricity, riding non-stop for 20 minutes to achieve the feat of the largest HPC in history. Read More
