Smart and Sustainable Bike Wheel Is U.S. Winner of James Dyson Award
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James Dyson, maker of the bladeless wonderfan that has allowed UnBeige HQ to make it through the summer sans air conditioning, and his industrial design-boosting foundation have announced the 18 regional winners of the 2010 James Dyson Award competition. The top American entry is the Copenhagen Wheel—a plug-and-play wheel that turns a regular bike into a smart, electric hybrid—invented by Christine Outram and a team of students at MIT’s SENSEable City Lab. Controlled through a rider’s smart phone, the wheel can capture the energy dissipated when breaking and cycling and save it for later use. The sleek red hub contains a motor, batteries, and an internal gear system, as well as environmental and location sensors that provide data for cycling-related mobile applications. Now in its final prototyping phase, the Copenhagen Wheel (named for those cycling-crazy Danes!) is slated to debut commercially next June at a cost of approximately $600 per wheel.
As national winners, Outram and SENSEable City Lab associate director Assaf Biderman are invited to visit Dyson laboratories in the UK (hint: tell them you have to go the bathroom and then grab a fan!) to participate in a workshop run by Dyson engineers. Meanwhile, their project and nine other U.S. finalists selected by alphabetically compatible design experts Allison Arieff and Amelia Amon have advanced to the next round of competition. Stay tuned to UnBeige to learn which problem-solving inventions make the international shortlist before the grand prize winner is announced on October 5. In the meantime, we suggest using your foreign language skills to peruse the other top regional entries, including an innovative Italian soap dispenser called “Whippy” that has a kicky Memphis group vibe.
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