Re-inventing the wheel for parcel deliveries
An Israeli designer has developed a new parcel delivery concept – called the TransWheel – which looks rather like a robotic unicycle. TransWheel’s inventor, Kobi Shikar, is a young industrial designer and the TransWheel was a “conceptual project” that was created as part of his final project at Israel’s Shenkar College High School education and design – so don’t expect to see TransWheel units rolling down your streets anytime soon. Nevertheless, the new concept has attracted a fair bit of interest in the high-tech press over the past few days.
Shikar described his invention thus: “Transwheel is an autonomous robotic wheel with a self-balancing system and an electric arms, and a GPS -driven communication capability that enables it to operate in isolation or as a member of the band Robots.”
In some respects, one could describe it as a “down-to-earth” drone. But while the TransWheel might allay all the fears about collisions with aircraft that are currently clipping the drone’s wings, the robo-wheel’s more grounded approach will bring it into frequent contact with people and all the paraphernalia of the urban street. Shikar says this won’t be a problem because the TransWheel would be equipped with detection cameras and collision-avoidance technologies; the public, however, may take some convincing on this point.
The inventor also maintains that the TransWheel is a scaleable parcel delivery steam. An individual TransWheel can carry small packages; but several TransWheels working together can transport larger, heavier goods.
Click here to see a video which imagines how the TransWheel might work in practice.
