Walking House

What if the next time you needed to move, you simply picked up your house and took it with you? Unlike a traditional mobile home, however, the Copenhagen-based collective N55's Walking House (built in conjunction with MIT) doesn't need a road. This "modular dwelling system," commissioned by the Wysing Arts Centre, is said to be a re-design -- and unique interpretation -- of an 18th century horse-drawn carriage.

To me, Walking House resembles a giant ant, with its six autonomous legs and hexagonal, tubular body. The unit is equipped with a "composting toilet system", solar cells, and small windmills. Its inventors say that this design "enables persons to live a peaceful nomadic life, moving slowly through the landscape or cityscape with minimal impact on the environment."

You can watch the YouTube video (below) of Walking House, but the speed is so slow that the clip is almost unwatchable. The house moves at a snail's pace of 60 meters per hour (0.037 miles per hour or about 4/100 of a mile per hour), which seems to fall short of the designer's intent to have the house "move at a slow pace similar to the walking speed of the human body."

Nonetheless, there's a lot to love about this little ant-like house. treehugger has been following this project from its inception, and it's fun to see how the project has evolved from prototype until now.

As a temporary dwelling, Walking House truly takes the fun of a treehouse to another level. But I can't imagine living full-time in such a structure. What do you think? Could you live in Walking House? If you were going to design a walking house, what would it look like?

BattleBots

BattleBots fans, rejoice! The dueling robot competition show, which last aired on American television in 2002, is due for a comeback. According to this article in Popular Mechanics, this new version of robot wars will focus strictly on the competition between the machines, targeting college students as designers. The televised event will likely air on an ESPN channel in November 2008.

With robot names like Diesector and Nightmare, watching the original BattleBots competitions on the Comedy Central TV series was a hoot. You can check out snips of previous BattleBot competitions on YouTube, like Best of Battlebots or Top 10 Battlebot Moments (the sound quality is poor on this one, but the clips are great -- note the sign-waving fans in the first one!)

Want to build your own competition-ready robot? There are a number of challenges out there just waiting for interested children and young adults! Check out the National Robotics Challenge or the Edventures Robotic Challenge: Grades 3-12 or drop by BEST and Botball® for middle & high school students.