Tag: Inspiration

Here's what we looked at this week:Personomic's 3D-printed bike saddles: A perfect match for your specific butt.Specialty tool design: A rocket-launched rope thrower for emergency rescue. Kohler's new in-toilet camera for analyzing gut health.

Toyota is a gigantic company that serves all markets. As a reminder of that, this three-wheeled LS Micro concept by Toyota's Lexus arm is the polar opposite, in terms of both style and function, of their IMV Origin vehicle. The LS Micro was just unveiled at the 2025 Japan Mobility Show, so at press time there was no explanatory press materials. The brief description of the concept is that it provides "autonomous chaffeur capability" to the luxury market, and that "its role is to deliver unparalleled luxury and presence, specifically handling the last mile of travel in urban areas."

Toyota revealed something crazy-sounding at the 2025 Japan Mobility Show. (The event is currently underway, so no official press pack loaded with images has yet been released—images are sparing.) Revealed at an on-stage event, this is their IMV Origin. And yes, this is what it would look like in production:The plan is to make the vehicle's parts at a Toyota factory, and ship it in pieces, initially to the African market; "It is not yet assembled into a drivable car," Toyota President Koji Sato explains. "It is the local people who assemble and complete this car."Why? Because doing it that way creates jobs.

Alex Beloborodov is a Tbilisi-based custom furniture marker. Despite his experience with woodworking tools, he's new to turning; and faced with a project that required him to make hundreds of the same leg on a lathe, he came up with a clever jig that provides real-time visual feedback on which parts of the blank need to be removed.

Kirk James, Principal, CEO at CincoWith every new technology platform or toolset, and with the general maturation of manufacturing alongside design and engineering, we've seen something subtle but powerful happen over the past few decades: deeper integration. Teams that once worked in parallel now converge. Those who thrive are those who can bring together supply chain thinking, manufacturing expertise, material innovation, and advanced engineering.Consumer electronics brought out the best in this convergence, especially for electrical engineers. But I'd ar

Not bad for a company barely two years old. Kickback, an NYC-based electronics startup, makes this RETRADISC, a Bluetooth-enabled CD player. It came out last year, and has already been picked up by the MoMA Design Store.

Well, it's happening. This week California-based 1X Technologies started taking orders for their NEO, a humanoid robot that acts as a household servant. The 5'6 'bot can do laundry, tidy up the house, fetch objects, carry groceries, water plants, open

In 1989 Reebok introduced the Reebok Pump, a sneaker with internal chambers that users could pump air into by squeezing a ball on the tongue, tightening the fit. The shoe was a massive hit, and Reebok sold millions of units well into the 1990s.Now, 36 years later, Nike's got the same idea—but for a jacket. Their Therma-FIT Air Milano Jacket contains inflatable baffles that provide more or less insulation depending on the inflation. Nike says it offers "warmth levels that range from a lightweight hoodie to a mid-weight puffer."

Last year a 7.6 earthquake hit Japan's Noto Peninsula, generating a 37-foot tsunami. Hundreds of aftershocks, nearly a thousand mudslides and rampant fires ripped through the region, damaging or destroying over 200,000 structures. Nearly 700 people died, a further 1,400 were injured, and thousands across the region were cut off, locked in place due to unusable roads. Elderly and rural residents had it the worst.A week after the quake, a quadrotor drone buzzed over impassable terrain, eventually reaching an evacuation center where residents were sheltering. The drone was carrying medication that they needed and had no other way of receiving.

In Mark Bowden's book "Black Hawk Down," he notes that young soldiers repeatedly describe the shocking surreality of combat as "like being in a movie." As the book covers events that occurred in 1993, these soldiers have no other frame of reference.The soldier of today grew up in a very different world, and in future, will surely describe combat as "like being in a video game." Particularly now that this EagleEye, an AI-powered helmet system developed by defense technology company Anduril, has been created.