Designed by Alexander Rose and Danny Hillis for the 2004 Popular Science Design Challenge, to supply clean water, communications and power after a disaster. Rose and Hillis’s aircraft-deployable station comes equipped with a water-purification unit, a computer and PDA-like networked communication devices, and a Stirling engine and power generator. An induction hose sucks in river water for purification. Users can borrow PDAs, which ping messages to one another and, when close enough to home base, into cyberspace. To make electricity, users either hop onto a stationary bike and pedal, hamster-style, or they can burn wood, rice husks or other combustibles. Weather permitting, the station’s Stirling engine can also run on solar power.
Other prize winning entries can be viewed here.
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