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Six futuristic off-road vehicles
By Cat DiStasio "Where we're going, we don't need roads." When Doc Brown said it, he was driving a flying time machine, of course. But not all vehicles need to become airborne to travel off the grid. This capability is especially important in rural areas where roads have never existed, or in disaster recovery situations where pathways are no longer passable due to earthquakes or flooding. No matter the reason, a slew of innovations are tackling off-road transportation like never before. Some futuristic all-terrain vehicles are built to drive over just about anything, while others have been engineered to carry their own road surface and pick it back up as they truck along. Whether the situation calls for traveling over impassable obstacles or creating a road for other vehicles, there's a tough machine out there to tackle the job.
Six machines that build a better world
By Cat DiStasio When it comes to construction, technology can go a long way toward making building projects faster, more economical and safer. Robots that can alleviate back-breaking manual labor and cut down on injuries are a welcome addition to work sites, and they can do everything from building a brick home to constructing a steel bridge. Other cool machines have been engineered to help those in need, like a 40-foot-tall 3D printer that makes mud houses for developing nations. With so many complicated tasks in the construction world, it's amazing to think about how machines can help us do them better, more powerful and often more eco friendly.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: slim skyscrapers, electric vehicles and the machine that lays brick roads
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. It's been a monumental week for green transportation as team Inhabitat hit the Los Angeles Auto Show to scope out the hottest up-and-coming eco vehicles - including the winner of the 2011 Green Car of the Year award, the Chevy Volt! We were also blown away the UK's first all-electric supercar while Honda announced plans to produce an all-electric version of its city-friendly Fit. Of course, clean green vehicles require a steady source of renewable fuel - which is where we were excited to see Washington DC install its first public EV charger while London announced plans to install 1,300 charging stations and Singapore fired up the world's largest biodiesel plant. This week we also looked at several amazing upgrades to our built environment, starting with the Tiger-Stone - an automatic brick laying machine that rolls out roads like carpet. Meanwhile researchers revealed a new way to repair our crumbling concrete infrastructure using genetically modified bacteria, and Taiwan unveiled plans for several futuristic skyscrapers that are wrapped in greenery and powered by the sun. Finally, this week we also brought you coverage of the latest and greatest green building technologies from one of the year's biggest green design shows - Greenbuild 2010. Speaking of high-tech green design, check out this handy solar charger shaped like a beetle and don't miss out on a chance to win a brand new Windows Phone 7!
