Heelys put to good use: energy harvesting
If you've ever visited a British shopping mall, you'll be aware that there's a plague sweeping the formerly great nation: annoying little kids riding around on their "Heelys," sneakers with wheels in the rear of the heal. Christian Croft, obviously a frequent watcher of The Matrix, thought to turn this mischievous toy into a force for good -- or, at the very least, a source of energy for our inevitable overlords. The Energy Harvesting Derive is a project that plugs the wheel into a mini-generator, which is in turn plugged into a small LCD mounted above the toe of the shoe. That wheel powered LCD could in the future give out useful information once a GPS receiver is attached, although for now it's acting as an ironic urban art project and is giving out random directions, all in an attempt to get people lost so that they interact with their environment. Well in that case, sounds like just the thing it needs is GPS.
