Volkswagen boffins turn staircase into giant working piano keyboard
Stairway to heaven?
Can’t be bothered taking the stairs or putting your rubbish in the bin? You might change your mind when you see how electronics have been used to create a set of musical stairs and a ‘bottomless’ bin.
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Car firm Volkswagen recently teamed up with some designers to transform a set of steps at a subway in Stockholm into, well, a giant musical keyboard not too dissimilar from those played by Tom Hanks in flick Big.
The subway keys don’t appear to light-up, but each plays an individual note every time someone steps on them.
Not into walking? How about chucking your rubbish into a bin that makes it sound as though your Coke can and chip papers are falling down a bottomless well?
That’s what Volkswagen’s other technical innovation does.
The bin also makes other random sounds too, we should point out.
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Reports as to why exactly Volkswagen chose to make a set of hi-tech stairs and a musical bin are mixed, but the reasoning seems to lie in finding ways of encouraging more people to use stairs – rather than take the escalator – and to put rubbish into bins instead of the nearest hedge.
Whatever the reasoning, the ‘experiments’ make great videos. And they seem to work. ®
COMMENTS
@Anonymous Coward 15:01 GMT
Why do they have to be deaf to make use of sign language
One of them could be mute or even both of them.
Maybe one is foreign but they both know signing.
many reasons
but then again i did go HUH !? when i first saw it. But then again i thought about it before posting (something i dont normally do)
De Efteling
De Efteling(1) over here in NL has had talking(2) litter receptacles for decades and they work. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. More power to their elbow etc. etc. etc.
(1) Think Alton Towers . . . only better.
(2) They spout "Papier hier"(3)
(3) For the linguistically challenged it literally translates as "Paper here."
EXCELLENT!
love it..
top marks to whoever thought of this..
How to?
Anyone know how they made this? It's pretty amazing and I want to build one, but I have no engineering skills in recreating such a thing XD
Well done, I say
Not only is the idea cool, but I observe that people in the video had a marked tendency to use the stairs instead of the escalator - even the older ones.
So it encourages people to take the stairs, which is healthy exercise.
Now I wonder what kind of racket that thing made during rush hour . . .
