The Walking House

What is 10' tall, has six hydraulic legs, and is powered by the wind and solar panels? The prototype pod house built by art collective N55 in Copenhagen, Denmark. With the help of MIT, N55 built the pod over a two-year period at a cost of £30,000. Designers say it provides a solution to the problem of rising water levels as the house can simply walk away from floods. One of the designers says, "This house is not just for travellers but also for anyone interested in a more general way of nomadic living." It won't be long now until the Japanese make Howl's Moving Castle.

Comments

blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[The_reformant]

Its only about the same size as the back of a transit van. Hardly a house or worth the ridiculous price tag. Caravans etc beat this hands down in every way.

Modern art is pointless.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a bit harsh. Modern art is *mostly* pointless.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[phantomfive]

Don't know about that, a motorhome typically costs over $100,000. This thing only cost about $50,000 (current exchange rate). It is solar and wind powered, and can go over any terrain. I could totally see it used as a cabin off in the mountains somewhere. When you get tired of one place, walk off to the next. Great place to become a philosopher. The Thoreau of the mechanical age.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Splab]

Also it is the price tag of the prototype ($50.000 for a prototype is cheap), they expect the resale price to be a lot lower.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[timmarhy]

yeah, but this thing is so slow it's almost useless and it's a lot smaller with less features. it's just a gimic, despite what you think you know from star wars, mechanical legs on everything is a really really bad idea when compared to wheels or tracks.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[bloodninja]

That's a bit harsh. Modern art is *mostly* pointless.

What's pointless about a house with no running water, no sewage system, and no electricity? I mean, come one, with Wifi and a cellphone what could the residents be missing?

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Modern art is pointless.

Maybe so.

But if you added a huge (solar) panel on the side of it, Star Wars fans would be queuing up for miles to get it.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Anonymous Coward]

...that's why I have wheels instead of legs.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[robajob]

And this time next week £30,000 will be about $5.50.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[XSpud]

Modern art is pointless.

You do know that the term "modern art" includes art by people such as Picasso, Van Gogh, Pollock, Dali, Cézanne, Manet etc?

I suspect you mean "contemporary art" or "postmodern art" or possibly "conceptual art"? "Modern art" is used to describe the majority of art created in the 100 years or so from 1860 onwards, and is related to modernism, rather than being used to describe any art that was created recently.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[oldhack]

"If it's good for anything, it isn't art." So I was told by art students.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[MrZaius]

>...that's why I have wheels instead of legs.

Instead of? Hate to break it to you, but if you're posting from the US the odds are over 9 to 1 that your household has at least one set of wheels. I believe the grandparent poster's point was that the legs on this new mobile home can't possibly move fast enough to provide effective means of evacuation (as described in the summary) or to negotiate its way through traffic. Barring your ability to go off-road in a settled environment without crushing everything in your path, your legs are prone to the same drawbacks.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[repvik]

The Picasso in my toilet is good for decoration. So it's not art :)

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[vadim_t]

Art can be useful. For instance, here's a translated quote from an old russian cartoon:

"Well, what is the picture on the wall good for, for instance?"
"It's a very useful picture -- it covers the hole on the wallpaper!"

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Anonymous Coward]

that's fine until it breaks down.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[MRe_nl]

Modern art is pointless? Au contraire, mon ami:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointillism

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[jimmypw]

is is apt.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[aurispector]

These would be great for all those poor villagers in places threatened by tsunamis. They could make them out of locally-sourced materials and run them on wave-generated energy, which they have in abundance.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Anonymous Coward]

apparently, you're unaware of how cheap and how large one can obtain canvas, or how easily they can be machine sewed together... true, if you want insulation you've got to go to something like polywhatever panels, and of course you would want some structural beams, and you'd want to make it aerodynamic so the structural beams aren't over burdened... i could imagine making a cheap but not exactly road approved house, if you pretend it's a trailer, you can still tow it with a trailer license... windows add a huge amount of costs, and 'real' doors would too, but hinges aren't that expensive, and using a couple boards to make using a standard doorknob doesn't add too much to the weight or cost...

obviously a DIY project takes a LOT of time, so really what do you have more of? time? or money? would you rather know what everything cost? and where it came from? or would you rather mindlessly consume someone elses design?

heck, you could power the whole rig with solar panels, if you really wanted to get a $20,000 cost of materials. what makes them cost $50,000 is the amount of work by humans and machines, and the cost of those construction techniques, and in some places laws about safety etc. an drivable RV usually costs a lot more than a trailer style rv, since the 'truck' part of the RV adds $20,000-30,000 of cost to the vehicle, at retail.

anyways, a walking home is going to move very slowly, a trailer or RV home will easily beat it on land speed, and a houseboat will easily beat it in speed over water, which would likely cause a walking house to short out.

but there is nothing like choosing to not live in coastal areas to avoid the worry about flooding caused by global warming. then again i live in a place that might someday be over run by glaciers.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[SimonGhent]

Get your walking house off my lawn!

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Whiteox]

Modern art is pointless.
Excellent! Yet I would have said 'Pointless is Modern Art!"

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Random Destruction]

Yeah, they'll just dig up some locally-sourced microcontrollers.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[capnkr]

My sailboat - made of FRP, 40 years old, a classic with a sound hull and rig - cost less than $5K to buy, and I will have less than $15K in her when she is completely fixed up, including replacement of all wiring, subsystems, etc... She uses solar and wind, and is just fine living off the grid. For ease of access, though, it costs less than $300/month to stay tied up to a marina dock. Mechanical propulsion, when needed, is provided by a small outboard which consumes only 1/4 gallon/hour at full speed. She is capable and able to go nearly anywhere in the world that there is a water depth of 3.5 feet or more. Floods only give her more places to go. ;)
 
There are many many hundreds if not thousands of older boats - power and sail - out there which get destroyed or sink due to neglect every year. With some due diligence, anyone can find a very sound vessel to start with, "recycling" in a sense, and living a lifestyle which has a very small 'footprint' of consumables. Why pay $50K for a home as small as a small boat, that can only traverse land (and that, slowly...), and which is absolutely dependent upon the grid?
 
Of special note is the fact that few marinas will have a true geek/nerd/IT pro in residence. Yet nearly all of them now have office computers, websites, and wireless networks - all things which can benefit from knowledgeable attention. Your skills and knowledge can make the cost of marina living a trivial sum, reducing your "existence tax" even more... ;)

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA;
"The makers hope the legs could be eventually mounted on any kind of structure and make it walk and several pods could be linked together for bigger houses."

The legs sound useful for mounting, unlike wheels which don't mount well to many things.. maybe car jacks?

It's expandable, but I tend to find even in my own house with 3 bedrooms I literally lived in 1 room. The more space you have, the more you waste. I'd much rather have compact housing like this and live in the great outdoors than have an extra room to store all my crap in and be stuck in this concrete jungle.

'despite what you think you know from star wars' - You are right here though, add on wings and that's a Tie Fighter!

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Lumpy]

but what do you do when you sit in a community of these things and some smartass kid yells "Form mecca Shiva!" and now your house is the upper thigh of a 260 foot tall god of Shaiva hell bent on wanton destruction?

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

"When you get tired of one place, walk off to the next."

Yeah, sure, and were are you going to walk? You can't have this on the public roads, it won't fit on a sidewalk, so no way you're going anywhere in this.

It's fun but it doesn't have any pratical use, IMHO.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[morgan_greywolf]

Yeah, they'll just dig up some locally-sourced microcontrollers.

Well, they should have no problem getting designs or technical support for one anyway. ;)

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[morgan_greywolf]

Hi. Sounds you're doing exactly what I want to do. I live in Florida, so I'm all set ocean-wise, but I'm having a hard time finding a sailboat that costs less than about $5K. Can you point out some resources of where I and other readers could get started?

Thanks!

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[kybur]

Any terrain? Maybe if you live on the plains or desert or tundra. Where I live, in Maine (USA), there is a lot of uninhabited land, but none of it would be accessible by such a device.

The trees and undergrowth are so dense in Northern Maine, that a one mile walk off path might take 3 or 4 hours.

Try finding the confluence point: 46N by 69W, you'll see what I mean.

The only places near me that this thing could possibly travel would be the public roads (and you'd probably have to register it as a farm tractor to legally take it on a public road).

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Anonymous Coward]

+100 informative!

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[John Hasler]

> can go over any terrain. Then why do we see it only on flat pavement? Let's see it go somewhere wheels can't. > I could totally see it used as a cabin off in the mountains somewhere. I can see a simple trailer used as a cabin off in the mountains somewhere. > When you get tired of one place, walk off to the next. After you get all those hydraulics working again. I could do it myself but most people whould have to bring in an expensive specialized mechanic. Wheels are a simple, reliable, inexpensive mature technology. And they can go over "varied terrain".

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[SlashDotDotDot]

Great place to become a philosopher. The Thoreau of the mechanical age.

Thoreau just rolled over in his grave...

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Yvan256]

ARTHUR DENT: Pointless? Is that all it's got to say?! One word! "Pointless"!? What the hell's that supposed to mean?

FORD PREFECT: Well there are a hundred billion houses on the planet and a limited amount of space in wikipedia. And no one knew much about the pod house of course.

ARTHUR DENT: Well I hope you've managed to rectify that a little.

FORD PREFECT: Yes! I transmitted a new entry off to the editor... He had to trim it a bit, but it's still an improvement!

ARTHUR DENT: What does it say now?

FORD PREFECT: "Mostly pointless".

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[aliquis]

A caravan is only about the size of a big tent, hardly a house or worth the ridiculous price tag.

(And houses are just our days caves anyway.)

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Amouth]

i agree that hte more space you have the more you waste.. personaly i could see my self living in something like this

http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=60;t=001461;p=1

if only i had a traveling job

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[LingNoi]

Note to artists.. world != you..

fucking self centred assholes..

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Firethorn]

First, found a MUCH better link about the house here

Technical specifications:
Basic module:
Height: 3.5 meters
Width: 3.5 meters
Length: 3.72 meters
Weight: 1200 kg
Max speed: 60 meters/hour
Component list:
Plating and framework wood and plywood
Legs made of steel and mechanical components
12 linear actuators
solar panels
micro windmills
polycarbonate plates
interior equipment

Height - not bad, but going by pictures goes from pavement to roof - you lose a foot or so before the floor.
Width - definetly counting the legs in, reducing it's usefullness as a measurement of living area.

From the last time I bothered to look inside of a trailorhome/motorhome(mall display, wasn't shopping for them), they're relative basins of luxury, and probably have 3 times the square footage(especially the expanding models) than what this one looks to have - it looks about the size of a car.

The $100k+ motorhomes come with bathroom, kitchen, living room, and even two bedrooms, even if microsized compared to standard houses. Most even come with bathtubs.

The walking one looks like you don't even have room to lay flat in the sleeping area.

Still, 3.5 meters long, figure 2 meters 'average' for floorspace(I think I'm being generous). That's 7 square meters, 75 square feet for the Americans. The 'Interstate', a microsized motorhome, calcs out to about 87.5 square feet, is capable of speeds around 600 times that of the walking house. Though it does retail for for ~$98k, verus $49k for the walking home. Still, you actually get a private bath with the Interstate. Then again, it looks like Airstream is expensive. Damon Motor Coach has a Class-A starting at $96k. Length of 33' 7" = 10 meters, motor homes are generally 70" wide, 1.77 meters. 17.7 m^2, 190 feet^2 of space. Even if we drop it to 9m for the engine, that's still 15 M^2, 161 ft^2.

Double the price, much nicer accomidations, a bit it actual insualtion in the walls, air conditioning, capable 600+ times the speed, a shower, furniture, etc...

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is the appropriate time for the requisite "Whoosh" sound...

(The parent poster is probably Charles Xavier. Or a Battlebot.)

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

Walk onto a waiting 18-wheeler parked in a nearby parking lot.
Drive to a new location and park near where you want the house to be located.
Walk off the truck and to the new location.

I could see this being useful as a command post for emergency services (say in a place with bad roads, or one where wheeled vehicles can't access for some reason.)

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Anonymous Coward]

My lawn now, bitch!

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Yewbert]

There goes the neighborhood.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Anonymous Coward]

"any terrain" ... just as long as it doesn't have any height differences that exceed 5 cm (those feet don't raise nearly as high as you'd think).

And obviously the terrain must be very stable and straight. Very, very, very stable and straight or the motors won't be able to compensate.

All this leads us to conclude that, while it might leave a bit less traces, it can move on mostly level roads and perhaps a local football field.

Any terrain however, is totally out of the question. This thing cannot manage forests, even if it were to fit in them, it cannot climb at any reasonable rate.

It is mainly an illustration of the so-called "reality-based" nature of the anti-co2 politics. That is something this thing does very, very well.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Try checking things like the classifieds and Craigslist-- the economic downturn is great for picking up boats. Of course anything at that price range will probably need to be repaired, but everything's pretty cheap to do yourself. I doubt you could get a wooden boat at that price range, but if you do just remember that the wood expands/contracts, moves around, and that anyone talking about using epoxy doesn't know what they're talking about.

Just keep in mind that a sailboat is cheap as long as you do preventative maintenance-- once things start to go really wrong the cost goes up by a lot.

Oh, and a little background-- I'm a freshman in college currently restoring a 1936 50' racing sailboat to live aboard on while I'm going to college. I've worked on a few boats before, doing a lot of restorative work. Wooden boats are fun, but also incredibly addicting. I'll keep an eye on this thread if you have any more questions, or you can email me at benj[dot]stamper[at]gmail[dot]com.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[capnkr]

Hard to distill all this for quick posting and easy digestion, but I'll try... Pardon me in advance for any sweeping generalizations; specific knowledge can be gained through further research. :) Anyone with further Q's can feel free to message me.

eBay, Craigslist, your local paper, and inquisitiveness while dock-walking will help you find a good boat for cheap. There are also lots of websites and books about restoring and living with older boats. One website which comes to mind is The Plastic Classic Forum, which deals almost exclusively with sailboats. Reading that site will lead you to many others, both forum-style, and personal sites.

DON'T be in a hurry; bide your time and do research while you get to know the market. Time is your friend; an good old boat is *not* getting more expensive... :)

Some quick notes: Basically, the 3 biggest factors determining price will be size, age, and condition. A 4th factor of importance is 'how eager is the seller'.

Unless you already have, or are willing to learn (a LOT), a wooden boat would probably not be your best choice. They are labor intensive and require specialized knowledge, even for maintenance. (They can be great if you have that, though.) Metal boats are similar - floating in electrolyte can take a huge toll on metal. FRP/Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic/fiberglass boats are the easiest to take care of, especially for someone new to boats. For this reason, I will concentrate on these.

Size: Smaller is easier, cheaper, and if you've been around boats/marinas for very long, you may well come to the conclusion that they are easier to use. From personal observation, it seems that the larger a boat is, the less it leaves the dock, as a general rule. 25' LOA (length overall) seems to be about the smallest size that you will commonly see people living on (that's how big my boat is, but I am a huge proponent of the KISS principle). On the upper end, you won't find many people singlehanding boats over, say, 45-50' LOA.

Age: FRP boats built prior to the first oil embargo in the early '70's are in the opinion of many the best FRP boats. Reasoning for that is the quality of resin used by production boat builders dropped when oil prices soared due to the embargo. Also, boats built then tend to be overbuilt, especially compared to today: the material was relatively new, so builders weren't sure how much material to use, and erred on the side of caution. FRP boats from the mid 70's up until the late 80's/early 90's commonly suffer 'blistering' problems (where water penetrates the hull via osmosis) that are expensive and difficult to fix.

Condition: The worse shape a boat is in, the longer its been neglected, the cheaper it will be. Look for something that has not been used in years; you will have to pay out of pocket for new gear, but many times on older boats, if you are smart, you will replace most of the older stuff anyway. :) Often you can find a boat that is basically just a hull (from a usability standpoint) for only a few hundred dollars. Stay away from 'cored' hulls, generally - you want solid fiberglass, because core almost invariably gets wet, rots, and has to be replaced. Cored decks can also be a problem, but are fixable relatively cheaply.

Good luck with your search, let me know how it goes, or if I can be of further help. :)

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[zippthorne]

Mechanical propulsion, when needed, is provided by a small outboard which consumes only 1/4 gallon/hour at full speed.

I recommend you get the sails fixed. They use even less fuel per hour.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[ramon_omar]

I, for one, welcome our six-legged pod-house overlords.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going the same direction, soon. Engine overhaul done, now working on cabin leaks and other hull issues. It always costs more and takes longer than you expect. Still worth it.

A house is like a leaky boat, except if you don't like your neighbors, you're stuck!

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[je ne sais quoi]

Jah, legs are good for traversing terrain that is uneven, e.g., NASA looks hard at walking robots for their extra-planetary adventures. So wheels are OK as long as you have roads or a relatively flat surface. Maybe someone in the U.S. is far too accustomed to lots of pavement and a sedentary lifestyle that might be lacking in less developed areas?

I dunno, I looked at the other pictures and it seemed kind of neat. I'm not sure I'd want to live in it permanently because their water storage solution seems a little ad hoc but the idea is interesting. I'd also like to know what the fuel economy on it is.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tracks, maybe, but in my experience wheels are always going off balances, deflating, or otherwise screwing up. Mechanical legs might be more durable.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Jeppe Salvesen]

Oh man. I wish I could find an ocean-worthy sailing boat for 5000 USD... Even if it's old. Solar + Wind + some fishing equipment = a low-effort way to stay alive.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[JoeMerchant]

If you only want to have your house in the paved world. Legs give access to about 10x more homesite choices.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[inviolet]

You are in an open field west of a big black house on legs with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.

> N

You are facing the north side of a black house on legs. There is no door here, and all the windows are unopenable.

> LOOK

In one corner of the house there is a small window which is slightly ajar.

> OPEN WINDOW

The window opens. Inside the house there are geeks.

> TAKE HOUSE

You can't afford that.

> meh

I don't know how to meh.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[DinDaddy]

You russians.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Siberwulf]

I for one and totally for a house with legs...in the mountains. What could go wrong?

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[jasmak]

Trying to sail with no wind can be a problem too... I recommend that you get that fixed.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[joebok]

But it is a really cool gimmick! It is thought-provoking in a way that a wheeled solution isn't. Wheels generally require roads and designated places to park; wheeled vehicles are associated with fuel of some kind - i.e. you are still tied into the current concept of "modern civilization".

This concept, while I agree seems ungainly and not practical, breaks some of those pre-conceived notions that some, especially the urban type, might be locked into. For example the concept of having to prepare/pave an area before moving in or of having to own land, etc.

Anyway - cool gimmick!

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[lucifuge31337]

No, that thing is the size of a reasonable class C motor home, which can be had for $65k or so, MUCH less used. It does 60 MPH, can be fitted with solar cells, and actually has running water and waste water storage.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[SputnikPanic]

I'll take Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House instead.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Midnight Thunder]

What's pointless about a house with no running water, no sewage system, and no electricity? I mean, come one, with Wifi and a cellphone what could the residents be missing?

Also taking into account, that your house can now also walk away from where you just took a dump.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[flyingsquid]

Don't know about that, a motorhome typically costs over $100,000 [rvbrokers.com]. This thing only cost about $50,000 (current exchange rate). It is solar and wind powered, and can go over any terrain. I could totally see it used as a cabin off in the mountains somewhere. When you get tired of one place, walk off to the next. Great place to become a philosopher. The Thoreau of the mechanical age. --

It would be cheaper and easier to do this the way the Mongols do. Get a ger- which can be put up or taken down in a matter of hours- and a herd of animals to help carry it, and to provide a source of food. Use a small wind generator or some solar cells for power. The Mongols have been doing the nomadic living thing for thousands of years, they've got it figured out pretty well.

The other possibility, of course: get a sailboat. There are vast stretches of uninhabited ocean and coast you can visit, and many of the world's major metropolises. Boats aren't cheap, but they are relatively fast (at least, compared to this thing) and open up huge areas that you can't see any other way.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[cecille]

I know you're joking, but ever tried to sail into a marina in a 25' boat? Not as easy as it sounds. Some of the marinas around us don't even allow you to come in with sails up because you can smack into the docks too easily. Not that it's impossible to do with a motor, just somewhat less risky.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[toQDuj]

Yes, there are a lot of places you can be with your boat, but not so many places *of interest* to be. The ocean is a big place, but you'll want to be near a big city in a marina with internet...

It's the same reason why waterplanes didn't take off. Sure, there's a lot of place they can land, but not so many places you would want to land...

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[2short]

"Jah, legs are good for traversing terrain that is uneven, e.g., NASA looks hard at walking robots for their extra-planetary adventures. So wheels are OK as long as you have roads or a relatively flat surface."

Um, NASA rovers, along with basically all man-made off-road vehicles, use wheels. Sometimes tracks. Never legs except for artistic reasons. Mechanical legs are a big failure-prone, inefficient PITA. Just making your wheels twice as big is cheap, easy and effective.

"Maybe someone in the U.S. is far too accustomed to lots of pavement and a sedentary lifestyle that might be lacking in less developed areas?"

Maybe someone in the wherever you're from is too accustomed to sitting around day-dreaming about how to get around outside. People who actually do it use wheels.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Molochi]

Check the marinas at lakes that don't allow public mooring (probably any of them). Any place where it would require some effort (ie a trailer) to move a boat and where the only option is to pay to store, moor, or dock a boat is a good place to look. At marinas on lakes in Georgia, for example they'll have a semi-annual auction for boats that are abandoned or delinquent in dock fees. I believe, in Georgia at least, that these types of public auction sales are required by law to establish a title of ownership. You may have similar laws in Fla, so check it out. Still, moving a sailboat/powerboat to Fla from Ga/Ala isn't big deal.

Most of the bigger boats that I see go cheap are steel flat hulled houseboats, old i/o board Searays and older sailboats that need a fair amount work, but few have touched saltwater, and you can inspect prospective purchases.

Also, I came across this looking for mooring laws in Fla. If they passed this law it would probably cause a lot of people to give up their boats cheap, esp with dollars stretched so thin...

http://www.latsandatts.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10464&sid=1f16d892e94aa5f152571e64017cefff

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Etcetera]

Note to artists.. world != you..

fucking self centred assholes..

Good luck convincing postmodern artists of that, though.... *sigh*

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Molochi]

I believe the correct response is, "I'll form the head!"

After all you want a good veiw, right?

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Running water? Walk to a river, extend trunk. Sewage? Walk to a manhole, position rear end. Electricity? Uh, what do you think those legs run on? Oh wait, it has a wood stove - steam?

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[D Ninja]

Floods only give her more places to go. ;)

Yeah! Well...let's see how your sailboat does during a drought! That's right Mr. Smarty-Pants. Whatcha gonna do now!!!

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[longacre]

"Ralph, Jesus doesn't have wheels!" --Miss Crabapple

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[DerekLyons]

Walk onto a waiting 18-wheeler parked in a nearby parking lot. Drive to a new location and park near where you want the house to be located. Walk off the truck and to the new location.

That's already possible, and widely done, without the need for legs. Houses and cabins are moved routinely. (I mean units designed to be moved, not Mega-Mover style.) The smallest such cabin I've seen is about three times the size of this thing and much more comfortable.
 
Not to mention under the current system you don't need to maintain the legs.
 
 

I could see this being useful as a command post for emergency services (say in a place with bad roads, or one where wheeled vehicles can't access for some reason.)

It's entirely too small to serve as any kind of a real command post, not to mention that by the time it reaches any significant distance off-road, the emergency will be long over. We already have tents and cell phones, this thing gives you nothing beyond the cool factor and has significant drawbacks.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[je ne sais quoi]

What the hell is this? Or this? Or this? Or this?

Get the picture? These are all NASA robots with legs. Just because they haven't used one yet doesn't mean they aren't looking at them.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[hotdiggitydawg]

Exactly. Over-complicated solution to a simple problem. Buy a Caravan/RV/Winnebago instead. The clue is in the phrase "mobile home".

Wouldn't be the first time this happened...

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[BattleApple]

The obvious solution is legs, with tracks for feet, and wheels on the tracks.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[BattleApple]

Yeah, I just hate it when all the oceans fall below 3.5 ft during a drought. :P

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[NormalVisual]

Just because they haven't used one yet doesn't mean they aren't looking at them.

True, but the fact that they haven't used one yet is a pretty strong indication that they still don't feel it's a practical means of locomotion at this time.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[reboot246]

We screwed up when we starting letting artists define what art is. From their point of view, if we don't like what they make, then we're the dumb ones. Bullshit!

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[reboot246]

Make that,

We screwed up when we started letting artists define what art is. From their point of view, if we don't like what they make, then we're the dumb ones. Bullshit!

Stupid keyboard! :)

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[dbcad7]

There is also steel... Of course with fuel costs, can get expensive.. Has been a dream of mine to get a "passagemaker", such as the diesel ducks, which you can get rigged with sails as well.. course then I'd actually have to learn to sail.... here's a link.. http://www.seahorseyachts.com/core/listing/pl_boat_detail.jsp?&units=Feet&id=1175275&lang=en&slim=broker&&hosturl=seahorsemarine&&ywo=seahorsemarine&

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[joeman3429]

yes, when they see a huge spike in power they just use their locally sourced walking house to move out of the way. I'm sure this thing can book it once all that tsunami created electricity comes in from their wave generators.

*vrrrrroooom*
"What was that?"
"Bob's sure leaving in a hurry"
"And the microwave I built from locally sourced materials is burning the hell out of my dinner"
*shrug*

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Psychofreak]

With all metal construction the cell phone won't work and WIFI will be useless due to the short distance, a cable would be cheaper, and the lack of a high speed internet connection.

Otherwise this is somewhat cool. It might be able to go places that roads are not. If it can't then its just art.
Phil

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[zippthorne]

I've done it. It's.. well, depending on which way the wind is blowing, and how hard, it's not too bad. Especially with a boat that small: you can just have your friend run up to the bow and kick the other boats if you get too close.

The marina should be somewhat protected from wind, or you can reef. And with a boat that size, and the sail down, you can hoist yourself with the anchor, row it from a dinghy, pull it from the dock like a canoe, scull with the tiller, push off the other boats with your feet...

150 years ago, people did it all the time. In much bigger boats. I think of it as a challenge to improve my seamanship.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Falconhell]

Any art that requires an explanantion doesn't qualify as art to me.

The modern phenomena of having to read an essay to understand a work of visual art is ridiculous.

Whilst I am not a big fan of Henlein, I loved the line from Time enough for love.

"A government sponsored artist is an incompetent whore".

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Falconhell]

FRP boats built prior to the first oil embargo in the early '70's are in the opinion of many the best

Hmmm, interesting, sailplanes of the same era, made of Fibre Reinforced Plastic, have a very similar history, in all the areas you mention.

Modern sailplanes have been made a lot lighter, due to the experience gained back then. The older gliders, in many cases 30 years old, can if well maintained look like new. Luckily for sailplanes, we can keep the gelcoat mostly dry, so a refinish
is *relatively* easy.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Falconhell]

"It always costs more and takes longer than you expect."

Daves Law

No project is ever as easy as it seems at first.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[risk one]

Just hope it doesn't step in anything.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[toddestan]

They could hop accross the border to China. I hear there are fields full of old 486s and Pentium IIs over there.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Anonymous Coward]

I did a little comparison when I built a small sailing dinghy nearly twenty years back. Doing an approximate conversion into US$, the rig with sails cost me about $1500. I could have bought a small outboard to drive the hull at much the same maximum speed for about $300 new. The difference would have bought a lot of outboard fuel. Sails don't last forever either. Of course sailing is much more fun, but I don't think it is really a whole lot cheaper.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Tubal-Cain]

I was expecting to see this.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[Tubal-Cain]

Probably because there is only one and it was just unveiled in the city. If you want pics of it in the woods they need to get it there first.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[capnkr]

you'll want to be near a big city in a marina with internet...

 
Only just long enough to get to a point where I don't have to... :D
 
Blasphemy it might seem to many here, but a deserted shore, or an "empty" sea far from 'peeps' and 'teh intertubes' is MORE than *of interest* to me. Those places away from big cities and marinas are richer in life and living than you might guess, even if they don't have broadband. Yes, it is hard to believe, but from experience, I can tell you its true. 3 times.
 
Over the horizon, just Being, out of sight of land, that is where I have passed some of the richest days of my life. I understand it's not for everyone, but it does work very well for me. Try it sometime - it might be something you find to be of inestimable vale as well.
 
Remember: There's a whole world out there, past our computer screens... :)

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[capnkr]

Takes a lot of outboard fuel to motor even just one "all day and all night", much less to cross an ocean, or a bay, or even to spend just a week traveling. Sails are cheaper, no doubt. A quality set can last several years, if, like a motor, they are taken care of and maintained.
 
Also, a lot has changed in 20 years. That same small o/b will *easily* cost you north of $800 today. If you are on the cheap, a used windsurfer mast makes a great $0-$50 spar for a dinghy, and people are making sails from all sorts of affordable materials now; Tyvek housewrap, blue tarps, Mylar space blankets, etc... Google up "PD Racers" for a great example of small, cheap sailboats - butt ugly, dirt cheap, simple and easy to both build and sail, but folks are making some surprisingly long journeys on them. 3 or 4 or more completed the Texas 200 rally this year. Neat stuff. :)

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[capnkr]

I remember the last time that happened, during the Great Drought of...

HEY! You kids get off my lawn!!!

Now, what was I saying?
 
:D

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[toQDuj]

I would love to try it some day, but first I have to get my wife to enjoy sailing (she has never been on a sailing boat), and then somehow find employment which could benefit (or who at least would not mind) from nomadism.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[The_reformant]

conceptual art is a better pigeon hole yes.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[The_reformant]

Those arent points! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_(geometry)

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[The_reformant]

Well surely still the followin inequality holds:
tent > caravan > walking box

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[The_reformant]

Actually I would lay money on a caravan being able to more succesfully negotiate uneven terrain than this monstrosity.

Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.

[2short]

I stand by my statement that NASA rovers, along with basically all man-made off-road vehicles, use wheels, sometimes tracks. Those are not off-road vehicles; they are in-lab toys.

People, even NASA, talk about all sorts of impractical things. They use the ones that work.

Legs are great for looking cool moving a few feet across a lab somewhere; they get press. Getting press doing pointless things is a NASA specialty. But when they go to the Moon or Mars, they bring wheels. When people go off-road on earth, they bring wheels. Wheels are better.

Looks....

[vidarh]

... like it'd go well with a Darth Vader suit.

Re:Looks....

[bloodninja]

it'd go well with a Darth Vader suit.

Either that, or a wrench.

Re:Looks....

[RuBLed]

It will go well too with a big hamster.

Re:Looks....

[laejoh]

With your userid I'd expected a remark about a robe and a wizards' hat!

Re:Looks....

[Wiarumas]

This is a bad marketing strategy. If they would have named it AT-AT walker, they might get more sales.

Re:Looks....

[elgatozorbas]

A tie goes well with any suit.

Re:Looks....

[robthebloke]

or turn it into a DVD projector...

Re:Looks....

[Yvan256]

Nope, this is the first model. It's called the XT-XT walker.

Re:Looks....

[Anonymous Coward]

Now imagine a singing, dancing hamster dressed up a Vader suit: Darth Hamster Dance.

"I find your lack of faith disturbing. Duh dah dee duh dah day..."

Re:Looks....

[tsalmark]

I'd prefer a Wench, but hey, to each his own.

Just add beer...

[retech]

This alters the playing field of going home drunk considerably.

You can either have your house follow you.

Or your house could just not be there when you go home.

Re:Just add beer...

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, I'll have an excuse when I stumble into random houses.

"Gee, I thought I parked my house here, sorry about that."

Re:Just add beer...

[retech]

And a great story to tell when a house stumbles into you!

Re:Just add beer...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or an execellent gift for the lazy stalker, the walking wankatorium!

Re:Just add beer...

[douglaid]

"Or your house could not be there..."

Don't let your wife have the keys!

Re:Just add beer...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could get charged with DUI while sitting at home.

Re:Just add beer...

[DalGoda_1]

Park on the highway then scream at everyone to "get out of my driveway".

Interesting

[xous]

but does it run Linux?

Re:Interesting

[sqldr]

Imagine a beowulf cl.... oh forget it..

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Stampede!

Re:Interesting

[onedotzero]

No, it just walks Linux...

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

No. RTFA! It walks, very slowly. It can't run.

Re:Interesting

[Notquitecajun]

Well...it runs....sort of...

Re:Interesting

[Emb3rz]

This should not be modded offtopic. Any cluster of said walking homes could qualify as a stampede (running may be a stretch, but still). Please mod to correct.

Re:Interesting

[robthebloke]

you'd need a new meme...

imagine a trailer park cluster of these....

Pounds?

[Carewolf]

A joint Danish and US project... So why is the price in British pounds?

Re:Pounds?

[cobaltnova]

Because the article is at a UK news site.

Re:Pounds?

[daveime]

Because the US Dollar has gone down the toilet ?

Re:Pounds?

[Anonymous Coward]

A joint Danish and US project... So why is the price in British pounds?

Because first it's the newspaper is the Telegraph, based in the UK if I'm not mistaken, and second because it's taking its maidren stroll in Cambridgeshire which leads me to believe that it may have been constructed in the UK as well. Sorry about the AC, I'm on a public terminal and forgot my password.

Re:Pounds?

[Xest]

Because the article is written by British press for their default British readership perhaps?

Re:Pounds?

[Svippy]

A joint Danish and US project... So why is the price in British pounds?

Because we are keeping secret what currency we use. I suppose Euro would have been more appropriate.

Damns those Danes and their crazy currencies!

Re:Pounds?

[John Hasler]

Yes, the number of dollars needed to buy a Euro has gone down recently, to 1.3 last I heard.

Not coloured impressed just yet

[Sere]

This is a house on legs in the same way that a RV is a house on wheels. Technically, sure, home is where you lay your head and all, but untill they can think of a way to shift 800 square feet of housing, it's just art/toy.

And wasn't Howl's Moving Castle British?

Re:Not coloured impressed just yet

[russ1337]

a house on wheels.

I think you might be on to something there....

Re:Not coloured impressed just yet

[Soruk]

Howl's Moving Castle (the book) was by London-born Diana Wynne Jones. The film based on the book was a Studio Ghibli production, with screenplay by Hayao Miyazaki.

Re:Not coloured impressed just yet

[AGMW]

Well why not scale it up 'a bit' so this thing is about the size of a reasonable room, then buy a bunch of them ... a bed room, living room, kitchen, cinema (?), toilet facilities, etc. Then have them nuzzle up to each other to facilitate walking from room-to-room?

Best yet, you can re-configure your house so your dining room is picking up the morning sun for breakfast, and when you get home from work it's letting you watch the sunset as you eat your supper! Go to bed watching the sunset, wake up watching the sunrise?

Sounds pretty neat actually!

Re:Not coloured impressed just yet

[hcpxvi]

And wasn't Howl's Moving Castle British?
The book was by a British author, but the film was (of course) Japanese.

Re:Not coloured impressed just yet

[somersault]

Best yet, you can re-configure your house into a giant mecha and join the fight against evil arch-villains

There we go, fixed that for you ;)

Re:Not coloured impressed just yet

[John Hasler]

And when you decide to relocate the rooms travel together in a small herd. Interesting image, but you can get you sunrise and sunset views more easily with a simpe rotating house. Or just by eating breakfast in the kitchen and dinner in the dining room.

Re:Not coloured impressed just yet

[macxcool]

I didn't expect Wizard Howl to show up on Slashdot. I loved that book (although it's a strange one). I e-mailed the link home as soon as I saw the article (my wife'll get a kick out if that). Of course, Howl's castle allowed him to open a door and enter different places and times where he lived separate lives (or was known there as a different character). I guess he's a bit like Dr. Who.

Re:Not coloured impressed just yet

[Molochi]

This is more like Baba Yaga's Hut.

Re:Not coloured impressed just yet

[f1vlad]

Haha definitely baba yaka high tech

Re:Not coloured impressed just yet

[AGMW]

And when you decide to relocate the rooms travel together in a small herd.

Love the 'herd' concept ... perhaps you'd only have 'personal' rooms and the 'facility' rooms would be grazing at or near the nesting sites and you just round up a suitable set of extra rooms when your personal rooms arrive - I'll have a family bathroom and an en-suite + a guest room as we have guests ... throw in a home cinema for Saturday night ...

There's that cool new invention

[Kickasso]

called "wheel". Very handy for moving things around. Check it out!

Re:There's that cool new invention

[hannson]

From TFA:

The 10ft high home is solar and wind powered and can stroll at walking pace across all terrains.

It has a living room, kitchen, toilet, bed, wood stove and mainframe computer which controls the legs.

Lets just hope that the house doesn't become depressed and suicidal.

Re:There's that cool new invention

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I think the legs are a solution looking for an issue. Wheels aren't that handy either if the "house" can be located at somewhat wet/slippery land and so forth. But tracks...the ones they use in tanks, too, would work since it doesn't have to be able to move fast. If there was just some hydraylics to raise the "house" a little it would be ready to move to another location.

Re:There's that cool new invention

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider this a way of finding a more robust caravan using legs instead of wheels.. but that's because.. you know what, read the article.

A) It's a prototype

B) It'll be a very cheap alternative to current housing

C) It moves

D) It can attach to things for stability easily

E) It's expandable

F) It's very energy efficient

G) It's powered by nature

H) It looks like a tie fighter

You guys remind me of the guys at HP when WoZ had to take his computer prototype in to them... "but we already have paper that does such a great job..".

It's much easier to hate than to love

Re:There's that cool new invention

[vvaduva]

Yes, and one huge issue that nobody appears to have noticed: how do you tow this thing around if it breaks? Does AAA cover it?

Re:There's that cool new invention

[John Hasler]

> Does AAA cover it?

Unlikely, considering that AAA has recently demonstrated their inability to handle even a simple gooseneck trailer.

Re:There's that cool new invention

[nurb432]

But you need streets for that. This could navigate the washed out roads in a disaster.

Be nice to see some interior pictures. Im picturing a motor home on stilts.

And what is this 'mainframe' ? ( i know, i know, its just semantics, but coming from the real mainframe world its funny )

Just a gimmick. Too small.

[bboxman]

Nothing but a gimmick. Not as practical as an RV. Probably not to pleasent to be in when it is "walking".

Re:Just a gimmick. Too small.

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably not too pleasant to be in when it is "walking".

Actually, babies would probably love it, sleeping peacefully,,,till the house stops moving.

It's too late.

[dasheiff]

You've awakened the house, and it catches you and eats you.

Maybe a dorm room...

[Strange Ranger]

That big piece from the Star Wars Lego set is not a house. Despite what you stuff inside of it. Form follows function. This would be a great tool for FEMA. But it's not a house. How about we stop building houses on the lowest parts of alluvial flood plains? There's a bright idea.

Re:Maybe a dorm room...

[polar red]

How about we stop building houses on the lowest parts of alluvial flood plains?

We've been building there because it is a great place to build harbours, and these places are usually also very fertile. It also makes us very vulnerable to rising sea-levels.

Re:Maybe a dorm room...

[adrianwn]

From TFS: "Designers say it provides a solution to the problem of rising water levels as the house can simply walk away from floods"

Yeah, right. They should build floating houses: when a flood comes, they just go with the flow.

Actually, from the looks on the picture, I'd say they can already float. Connect a dozen of them and you get yourself a raft. Now add a computer to each one and you have a Beowulf cluster.

Re:Maybe a dorm room...

[geekmux]

How about we stop building houses on the lowest parts of alluvial flood plains? There's a bright idea.

Hold that thought, let me check something....

Nope. Just as I thought, there are still people living in New Orleans. When we have to start trying to convince people in areas below sea level, I'd say you're fighting a losing battle.

Re:Maybe a dorm room...

[zakezuke]

That big piece from the Star Wars Lego set is not a house. Despite what you stuff inside of it. Form follows function. This would be a great tool for FEMA. But it's not a house. How about we stop building houses on the lowest parts of alluvial flood plains? There's a bright idea.

You have a point IF you negate the profit from the shipping and agricultural industry. I won't disagree people build in stupid places. I'm sure you can look at your own down and see new construction in areas that we didn't build in before, areas like drainage basins. There, when it floods, well, their own damn fault for building there. But coastal, river, and flood plane communities, well, loosing a house from time to time is pretty trivial when considering the benefits we get from them.

Re:Maybe a dorm room...

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFS: "Designers say it provides a solution to the problem of rising water levels as the house can simply walk away from floods"

Ya, like you can just walk away from a flood. Call me when they've taught it to dog-paddle.

Re:Maybe a dorm room...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yeah, right. They should build floating houses: when a flood comes, they just go with the flow."

houses do that already, in pieces.
and i imagine a bunch of floating house would also go to pieces as they smash into each other down the block.
and whats to stop a floating house from hitting a car and rolling? then you are as good as dead anyways with t.v.s, refrigerators, other people flying around inside.

Re:Maybe a dorm room...

[NeilTheStupidHead]

They should build floating houses

If by 'they', you mean the Dutch, then they already have.

Perhaps my favourite bit is that they're floating on concrete, which is an often overlooked/unappreciated building material.

Re:Maybe a dorm room...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever heard of the netherlands? ~80% of it is under sea-level and we seem to be doing just fine without walking houses. We do however have a roundabout with a rotating house on it.

Re:Maybe a dorm room...

[Firethorn]

We've been building there because it is a great place to build harbours

Not that I object to this - Just that New Orleans ended up being far more than just a harbour, so I think the correct response would be to build housing for the area - whether it be on stilts to let tidal wash from hurricanes pass underneath and survive the occasional flood, to having everybody simply live in RVs/Mobile homes and simply pull out for the occasional hurricane, to crazier stuff like building your house on a float pallet or being able to crank it up to keep it above the water line.

Either that or build cheap and simply accept that you'll be buying/building a new house every ten years or so. Or have your insurance pay, and pay the corresponding premiums. Therefore, the only people who can 'afford' to work there are the ones essential to the harbour industry who get correspondingly huge wages.

Housing in the USA today has gotten somewhat crazy. People are buying a LOT more than they need. Personally, I think that, in some circumstances, 'disposable' housing is a perfectly reasonable response. Build it cheap, replace when destroyed.

Re:Maybe a dorm room...

[somersault]

i imagine a bunch of floating house would also go to pieces as they smash into each other down the block

Sounds pretty easily solved by anchors, and perhaps rubber impact barriers round the edges just in case (but that wouldn't work so well in stormy weather).

whats to stop a floating house from hitting a car and rolling?

If everyone was living in floating houses, wouldn't they have boats rather than cars? And what exactly would cause a house to 'roll' just because it hit a car? Houses are much heavier than cars so they'd likely just push the car along because of their greater momentum. If the car was cemented into the ground and there was a big wave driving the house then perhaps it would have a chance of toppling, but if you have designed in a nice low centre of gravity (ie just have one floor, or have a lot of ballast in the bottom), it would have to be a biiiig wave.

A floating house would have everything bolted down too. You think people have their refridgerators flying around everywhere inside their limousines, private jets and yachts? If you're going to suggest problems, try to come up with some obvious solutions yourself before tellling these problems to other people. If you can think up solutions, chances are that engineers can too.

It's not like to make a floating house you would just take a normal house and put an inflatable raft in the foundations. If you were that worried about your area flooding, you could just buy a proper houseboat or get a house somewhere else.

Re:Maybe a dorm room...

[Jaysyn]

RV's sure. Moving a mobile home is a semi-major undertaking that will set you back anywhere from $3000 to $5000.

Just saying.

Re:Maybe a dorm room...

[polar red]

building a new house every ten years or so

... errrr ... How are you gonna afford that ? I think building a simple house costs you a certain 50K euro's ... besides, last time i checked, you could just repaint, or if you're more thorough , redo your plaster cast

Re:Maybe a dorm room...

[Firethorn]

... errrr ... How are you gonna afford that?

Working in an area that's known for knocking everything down every decade and being paid/budgeting for appropriately.

I think building a simple house costs you a certain 50K euro's ... besides, last time i checked, you could just repaint, or if you're more thorough , redo your plaster cast

You can get a brand spanking new, if cheap, single wide for $24k - $35k USD here in the states. Or ~€19K - €27k

At that rate, it's only $240/month if you figure on replacing the thing every 120 months. Less if you invest the money, a bit more if you get a loan to pay it.

Re:Maybe a dorm room...

[VanessaE]

Am I the only one who thought of the Merrie Melodies episode, "Design for Leaving" upon reading the "on stilts" part of your comment? From the end of the episode:

.
Elmer Fudd: Say... I wonder what that wed button is for...
[Presses the initially unmarked red button, which lights a label reading "In case of tidal wave"]
[Mechanical noises, house rises high into the air]
[Elmer opens the front door to see Daffy Duck approaching in a helicopter]
Daffy: For a small price, I can install this little blue button to get you down.

Re:Maybe a dorm room...

[polar red]

knocking everything down every decade

what do you guys build with ? paper ?

Re:Maybe a dorm room...

[Firethorn]

what do you guys build with ? paper?

Wood frame construction, mostly. What I was refering to was some coastal areas that, on average, get nailed with a huge hurricane every decade or so. You get flooding along with that, not to mention that along with the hurricane force winds you get even worse tornados.

Depending on the exact spot, there are areas that will destroy a house unless it's built like a military bunker - IE extremely expensively. Even then it's not a sure thing if you get unlucky. My point was that in some cases it'd actually be cheaper on average, to just go with 2-4 cheap houses than 1 expensive one.

Its a trailer with legs

[Viol8]

You can just imagine the high class of people that would want to live in this tin can.

Perhaps its time these "artists" stopped reading comic books reconnected with the real world.

Re:Its a trailer with legs

[bloodninja]

You can just imagine the high class of people that would want to live in this tin can.

They call themselves "artitsts".

Perhaps its time these "artists" stopped reading comic books reconnected with the real world.

See, you already knew.

Re:Its a trailer with legs

[ZeroExistenZ]

You can just imagine the high class of people that would want to live in this tin can.

None. But consider this; housing gets more expensive, so only the "high class" people can afford land and to build a house on it.

So, more individuals are forced to find a more affordable sollution; a tiny mobile house fit with media to numb down the mind. But you have no land! Oh, lets rent a standing space from the "high class", and lets move when we cannot afford it anymore...

You can put your sexy cool and nerdy pod on my land, if you pay yearly rent while you play your games and try to find a mate ;)

Re:Its a trailer with legs

[dreamchaser]

That arrangement already exists. They are called trailer parks.

Re:Its a trailer with legs

[ZeroExistenZ]

That arrangement already exists. They are called trailer parks.

Yes, but now they're accessable and acceptably fashionable for StarWars nerds ;)

Re:Its a trailer with legs

[Firethorn]

None. But consider this; housing gets more expensive, so only the "high class" people can afford land and to build a house on it.

Despite everything else, this isn't a good usage of limited land*. Consider, a 3 story condo/apartment complex can offer it's residents four times the floor space in about the same amount of actual land, far more luxury in the sense of having actual water and sewer, air conditioning, etc... Make it 6-10 stories and each apartment can be luxurious, space wise. I doubt you'd be able to stack these 6 high. Worried about flooding? I saw a condo being built that was 6 levels of parking garage and 12 levels of condo.

Humans wanting to live denser calls more for multistory buildings, and I'd like to see more arcology type structures - retail businesses on the bottom, offices in the middle, living quarters on the top, except for maybe a rooftop restaurant. Even that's flexible. Want to put the housing on even floors and the businesses on odd? That'd work too.

So, more individuals are forced to find a more affordable sollution; a tiny mobile house fit with media to numb down the mind. But you have no land!

The idea of the common man having a large house is a very new one in the scheme of things. I mean, modern bedrooms are bigger than many King's back in the medieval period.

Sure, land is limited, especially when you consider we need to grow crops on it still, and want a reasonable commute to work. As I said earlier - I think vertical integration, especially 'mini arcologies' is the answer. If I was a city planner I'd be working on ways to encourage them. Probably through tax breaks if they build at least as much housing into the building as they'd be anticipating working there.

Imagine getting up in the morning, taking an elevator down to go to work in accounting office on floor 10, taking lunch two stories up, leaving early to down to floor 5 to visit the dentist, pick up your kids from daycare on 12, go to the roof to play some frisbee before dropping a floor to have a nice meal in the penthouse restraunt before heading home on floor 40.

Oh, lets rent a standing space from the "high class", and lets move when we cannot afford it anymore...

As somebody else noted, this is known as a 'trailor park'.

*BTW, I'm wierd in that I don't think homes appreciate in value; the LAND, if in an area of expanding development does, but the house doesn't. It just depreciates slower than inflation and value can be kept up/increased with renovations. I figure this is part of the reason for the housing collapse - people were sold a different 'truth', which finally broke down.

Re:Its a trailer with legs

[Anonymous Coward]

a 3 story condo/apartment complex can offer it's residents

its
"It's" means "it is".

I mean, modern bedrooms are bigger than many King's back in the medieval period.

kings'
It isn't a proper noun and you place the apostrophe after the s to make a plural possessive.

have a nice meal in the penthouse restraunt

restaurant

As somebody else noted, this is known as a 'trailor park'.

Or, in English, a "trailer park".

*BTW, I'm wierd in that I don't think homes appreciate in value

weird

Re:Its a trailer with legs

[drsquare]

Imagine getting up in the morning, taking an elevator down to go to work in accounting office on floor 10, taking lunch two stories up, leaving early to down to floor 5 to visit the dentist, pick up your kids from daycare on 12, go to the roof to play some frisbee before dropping a floor to have a nice meal in the penthouse restraunt before heading home on floor 40.

If I wanted to live my entire life in a single building I'd join the navy. Or become Alan Partridge.

*BTW, I'm wierd in that I don't think homes appreciate in value; the LAND, if in an area of expanding development does, but the house doesn't. It just depreciates slower than inflation and value can be kept up/increased with renovations. I figure this is part of the reason for the housing collapse - people were sold a different 'truth', which finally broke down.

Houses go up in value. There's only so much land, and it costs money to build them. Maybe those cheap American wooden things only go up in value with the land, but an 18th century manor is definitely going to set you back. The housing market collapsed because prices were inflated by ridiculous loans.

Re:Its a trailer with legs

[raddan]

It just depreciates slower than inflation and value can be kept up/increased with renovations.

I think you're mostly right, except that there's another variable, which is historical significance. As I live in Massachusetts, there are a large number of homes here with some historical significance, and that adds a fair amount of value to the total property value. My parents live in one such house.

Re:Its a trailer with legs

[Firethorn]

If I wanted to live my entire life in a single building I'd join the navy. Or become Alan Partridge.

Didn't mean for you to live your entire life in a single building, and I probably should have kept the mention of roof garden/play area more explicit in there. My point was that you'd be able to exist just fine day to day completely inside the building, using relatively extremely fast and efficient elevators.

In addition, for such an enterprise it'd be completely possible to have the areas vary widely - essentially modular construction within the shell of the building. Different paint schemes, different elevator treatments(you'd want mostly different elevators for the housing areas), etc...

It's not a big deal if your doctor's office is in a different building. It's not a big deal if the school the kids go to is in a different building. Etc... It's just that all the little details add up into big deals eventually; resulting in sprawl, extended travel times, etc... I mean, just imagine if NYC changed ways such that 50% of people lived in the building they work in. On average, one spouse works in the building they live in, the other commutes. Some have both people working in the same building, some neither do. How much traffic on the roads would be eliminated? How less crowded would the subways be?

From the personal side - Which would you rather do, spend 5 minutes on an elevator and a couple minutes walking to get to work, or drive 20 minutes(possibly in heavy traffic), still have to walk several minutes to get from your car to work. Maintaining a car is probably $400/month, minimum, a bus pass in some areas is $100 or more(unsubsidized), even subway tokens cost money. Or you can ride a free elevator*. It could easily free up an hour/day for other pursuits.

*Well, the cost of the elevator is in the rent/association dues, but would be there anyways for multilevel dwellings.

Re:Its a trailer with legs

[Firethorn]

I think you're mostly right, except that there's another variable, which is historical significance.

That would be the 'antique' exception that I forgot to mention. Applies with cars, furniture, and such as well. A model-T isn't a great car in the face of it, but it is a 'classic'. Problem with exceptions is that you end up making posts extremely long trying to cover them.

Still, the 'average' house doesn't gain value from this, and the McMansions almost certainly won't. They lack the possibility of soul of houses considered antique today have. To be fair; there were buildings such as them back in the day when the antique houses were new - but they didn't survive.

I'd estimate that less than 1% of homes will achieve 'antique' status - IE a substantial portion of their value is derived because of their old age, not despite it.

Re:Its a trailer with legs

[hey!]

I agree. The solution to land use problems is planning.

This doesn't make the technology useless though. You jut have to imagine all the thing you could you could do with a large, self-powered, all terrain robotic platform. Among other things, it could be a self-propelled toolbox. Or if you filled the thing with batteries and let it sit charging most of the time, it could be a walking emergency power source.

I'm imagining that some day we might have giant robotic ants that build infrastructure projects like railways and bridges.

Re:Its a trailer with legs

[holmstar]

From the personal side - Which would you rather do, spend 5 minutes on an elevator and a couple minutes walking to get to work, or drive 20 minutes(possibly in heavy traffic), still have to walk several minutes to get from your car to work. Maintaining a car is probably $400/month, minimum, a bus pass in some areas is $100 or more(unsubsidized), even subway tokens cost money. Or you can ride a free elevator*. It could easily free up an hour/day for other pursuits.

*Well, the cost of the elevator is in the rent/association dues, but would be there anyways for multilevel dwellings.

None of the above. Living in large cities sucks IMHO. I'd rather live on the edge of a smallish town or in the country entirely, running my own business on my own property. Little noise and traffic, no crowds to speak of, clean air and trees to look at out your window instead of concrete. I'd be willing to pay a lot more in order to live like that and avoid city life.

Re:Its a trailer with legs

[extrasolar]

Perhaps its time these "artists" stopped reading comic books reconnected with the real world.

And you should add that this was said by some dork on Slashdot.

Re:Its a trailer with legs

[Viol8]

Speak for yourself troll.

How this house came to be

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm assuming the process went something like this:

1) artists obtain grants (ie tax payer's money)
2) artists hire engineers
3) engineers raise their eyebrows, but agree to put legs on a caravan

Slashdot has useful pics instead of weird icons???

[yo303]

So... the pic shown in the front summary story is actually relevant?

I don't like it. [shakes fist]

Weeeeheeeee!

[cosmocain]

You could pack sharks in there.
And lasers on top...

...of the sharks and the house!

He might be walking..

[Scott Kevill]

.. but he still needs the cane.

"Paw....

[PinkyDead]

...them housey thingumies is up on the back field again."

"Boy, fetch my shotgun."

Images!

[Anonymous Coward]

Argh! Slashdot has images in the articles! What herecy!

Re:Images!

[Whiteox]

heresy: 2 a: dissent or deviation from a dominant theory, opinion, or practice b: an opinion, doctrine, or practice contrary to the truth or to generally accepted beliefs or standards
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heresy

And yes, even Slashdot has weakened and now we see images in articles. Soon there will be mp3 soundbites (most probably ogg vorbis or flac just to be difficult) and a social network where we can all get to know one another. Wouldn't that be fun?
I'm feeling a little woozy... I think I'll lie down somewhere.

In Soviet Russia..

[bronney]

Home goes you!

Baba Yaga

[s-meister]

I want one with chicken legs...

Re:Baba Yaga

[aproposofwhat]

Yeah - Chris Evans interviewed the artist on the radio yesterday afternoon, and he's usually quite good at matching the following tune to the interview subject.

Guess Mussorgsky must have passed him by in his youth, 'cause he sure missed a trick there (even the ELP version would have done - I'm no snob!) :)

Re:Baba Yaga

[david.emery]

And as Ensign Chekov would point out " Was first thought up by Russians!"

Re:Baba Yaga

[Anonymous Coward]

What you're referring to is called an "izbushka" in Russian -- yes, they really do have a word for the wooden house with chicken legs that Baba Yaga lived in. :-)

The funniest part of the article...

[xorsyst]

"Mr Slaatto plans to live in the house when it returns to Copenhagen." How will it cross the north sea? Does it work underwater? That would be way cool.

Re:The funniest part of the article...

[Molochi]

Dog paddle.

Oh man

[kitsunewarlock]

This is so awesome! Mobile houses!? What's next: houses on wheels? Water? In trees!?!?

Exotic bloody solids

[kahei]

...and needless to say these guys design everything as a truncated octahedron or a hexagonal prism (on it's side, yet, so there are no vertical walls) and never as a BORING OLD CUBOID. Because having wide flat floors to live on and vertical walls to put doors in would be too boring and traditional and convenient.

Instead, their project has cuboctahedral modules that join onto each other via round portholes that are at about 30 degrees off vertical. I don't know what it is about architects that gives them such contempt for the actual users of their buildings. Everyone else designs to co-operate with the eventual users. Architects design to be clever, where 'clever' means lots of big geometrical shapes that reflect sound and carry vibration and have nowhere to sit down. Metal-walled buildings are pretty grim anyway from a temperature/moisture control/vibration point of view, but making it cuboid, corrugating the surfaces a bit and avoiding welds (in favor of joins that provide some damping) would be a start.

I think the acid test for innovative housing ideas should be: do they have to resort to silly futuristic shapes, or is there a chance they have some actual ideas for creating nice places to live?

Re:Exotic bloody solids

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what it is about architects that gives them such contempt for the actual users of their buildings.

It's just a typical architects wet dream. It looks cool and futuristic, they talk about how it's "the housing of the future", everyone ohhhs and ahhhs for a while and then it's forgotten (except for occasional dupes on Slashdot and Digg).

If it was actually built and used, everyone would quickly realize how impractical it was (except for the few diehards who prize form over function).

Re:Exotic bloody solids

[drooling-dog]

All true, but the idea - as it is so often around here - is to attract attention rather than provide mere functionality. The thing is basically a weirdified RV, but nobody's going to post a story about a motor home to Slashdot, saying "Hey look! You can move it in case of a flood!"

Re:Exotic bloody solids

[Red Flayer]

...and needless to say these guys design everything as a truncated octahedron or a hexagonal prism (on it's side, yet, so there are no vertical walls) and never as a BORING OLD CUBOID. Because having wide flat floors to live on and vertical walls to put doors in would be too boring and traditional and convenient.

And yet, hexagonal prisms are stacked more easily than cubes. You only need to lift 1/2h instead of h in order to attach the next one.

And hexes, when space is a constrain, are more efficient for furnished rooms. If your seats are built on the walls, you lose less space to the seating.

Hexes also allow greater variability in stacking arrangements -- some people prefer more options, and six walls are greater than four in this regard.

Hexes require less flat ground in order to "park" them, since the area of the bottom facet is smaller.

Maybe the attachment points for the legs are better on a hex than on a cube; if you attach the legs to the bottom vertice of a cube, you will be top-heave and more likely to topple, I believe. If you attach them to the faces of the cube, maye it's more expensive (both in weight and in cost) to provide the necessary support.

These are just some reasons off the top of my head, for why hexes *might* be preferable to cubes, I'm sure there are others.

The biggest one being, IMO, the preference of early adopters for things that look cool. The wow factor is a big draw for frivolous luxury goods like this.

Re:Exotic bloody solids

[thedonger]

Since this hex is on its side it is just a glorified cube.

Re:Exotic bloody solids

[maxume]

Your premise is wrong. This is not a luxury good.

Re:Exotic bloody solids

[spiffyman]

My wife is finishing her professional degree at a top 5 architecture school and has worked for various firms for a few years now. Before we met, I didn't know the slightest thing about what you might call our "artificial environment" and the way it gets designed. Now I know more than my fair share.

I say that only to bolster the following claim: the people who do the things you're talking about are largely beholden to ideas of the past. A lot of work these days goes into designing spaces that are comfortable and inviting for their users - not alienating and weird. And even if a lot of professionals are producing weird things, students these days are being moved past that in their actual design work.

There are certainly buildings - see videos of the "fog building" at a festival several years ago - that boggle the mind of people like you and me, but those projects are often just playful efforts. And we do it, too. Have you seen the iPhone beer?

Besides, TFA points out that the designers want the leg technology to be used by other structures and that they'd like to link together several of the structures - an idea that supports what another reply to your post suggested.

Re:Exotic bloody solids

[Red Flayer]

For early adopters?

This is a luxury good for the time being. It's a novelty item.

Later on, maybe a different story.

Re:Exotic bloody solids

[maxume]

I meant that it is a stupid good, not that it is for everybody.

Re:Exotic bloody solids

[Red Flayer]

No arguments there. It's a pretty stupid good regardless of the shape, IMO.

Re:Exotic bloody solids

[DNS-and-BIND]

Can we please have less anti-intellectual bullshit on Slashdot, and more stimulating discussions? Take your uneducated opinions back to the trailer park that you came from. Why don't you create something yourself, then we'll talk? And I'm not talking about creationism, you cretin.

Re:Exotic bloody solids

[Falconhell]

"I don't know what it is about architects that gives them such contempt for the actual users of their buildings"

I saw at TV show where an architect was asked why people liked classic building styles. His reply, that it was the pavlovs dog effect, that peolpe had been told these were attractive and were incapable of assessing them.

Whilst making my blood boil, explains how they can design some of the ghastly objects they do, and give themselves awards for them....They really think the rest of us cant apreciate their work.

Excellent for fantasy fiction LARPers

[Lord Iffy Boatrace]

Now I really can be Sheelba of the Eyeless Face!

the house was fun to own

[circletimessquare]

ambulating whimsically about the countryside

until the day it wandered into an AT-AT retirement farm, during mating season

let me tell you, it's not fun to be in a house on legs being humped by a horny AT-AT

Meh. The Simpsons Did It.

[lazynomer]

The Simpsons Did It. (They haven't yet.)

..Controlled by a mainframe ??

[alxtoth]

TFA states "and mainframe computer which controls the legs". If it happens to be one of those bigger mainframes, there is hardly any space left to sit ( http://www.webmilhouse.com/wordpress/wp-content/HomeComputer.jpg )

Re:..Controlled by a mainframe ??

[kronick]

"Mainframe" in this case actually means 1GHz mini-ITX computer. Blame it on bad reporting.

Dude...

[geekmux]

It's bad enough when I forget where I parked my car.

"Dude, we got so wasted last night!"

"Yeah, we did!"

"Dude, where's your house?"

Re:There's that cool new invention called 'wheel'

[Smivs]

And it's not even patented yet!

Imperial walker?

[TheDarkMaster]

Just add a neck, some turbolasers, sells as "AT-AT mark2" and profit!

Mobile home?

[Anonymous Coward]

Current mobile homes are classified as such based on whether or not they have wheels... what would this be classified as for tax purposes?

Will it catch fire?

[Ironix]

When I first read the title of this story, I immediately thought of an old Simpsons episode from 1994, "Homer the Vigilante" where Professor Fink invents a house that runs down the street in order to get away from a burglar.

Professor Frink's Burglar Alarm

Unfortunately, due to the lovely state of copyright in the U.S., I couldn't find a single video clip. Best I could find was an audio clip. =(

What Comes Next

[Capt James McCarthy]

The Mobile Outhouse

Video of house walking:

[kj_kabaje]

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/10/n55-walking-house.php

Re:There's that cool new invention called 'wheel'

[ORBAT]

Shh! Don't give the patent trolls any funny ideas.

Property

[srothroc]

It's great for a nomadic lifestyle and all, but isn't there something like a concept of property that prevents you from just up and going somewhere else? If you own all the land, then it's not very nomadic and odds are that you're not moving very much.

The RV of the Future

[ehaggis]

But does it come in a double-wide?

New Dictionary Entry Needed

[Rick.C]

... under "squatters".

Well, it needed saying...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Designers say it provides a solution to the problem of rising water levels as the house can simply walk away from floods..."

I have only one thing to say.

Houseboats

Re:There's that cool new invention called 'wheel'

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's not even patented yet!

You're behind the times !

Re:There's that cool new invention called 'wheel'

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it is: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn965.html

First steps

[stevenp]

The first steps of the Walking House:

Re:Slashdot has weird pics instead of useful icons

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't like it either!

D & D

[hesaigo999ca]

When are they going to make the eye of vecna, or ring of gaxx...
I could really use one of those....

Walk away from floods?

[SamSim]

Walk away from floods? Along what? Roads? I would bet any money that this thing is not street legal.

Re:Walk away from floods?

[DeadPixels]

Not only that, but has it been tested on wet, slippery terrain? Sure, it walks fine now, but it might not be so great in a foot and a half of water. I have to wonder if it's shaped the way it is because of the fact that it's wind powered - it could possibly be a matter of directing wind. Can't say I'd find a hexagonal house to be practical, though!

Re:There's that cool new invention called 'wheel'

[Smivs]

I'll bet the 'artist' who drew this would contest this patent if he hadn't been dead for 1000s of years!

more room

[swigabyte]

There's not enough room for my girl robot. Maybe, I can get two and link them together. Better yet, maybe I can get several and make a train of walking houses (garage, guest house, ...). So it will look like a giant centipede from google satellite images. That way millions of years from now, our ancestors (or perhaps aliens) will dig up my houses, and think that giant robotic centipedes once roamed the Earth.

Dude, where's my house?

[TrnsltLife]

It sucks to have your car stolen, as I know from recent experience. Even worse having your house stolen.

Bayanihan

[dominique_cimafranca]

We Filipinos were way ahead in that regard -> http://farm1.static.flickr.com/25/103053707_82776c774a.jpg

("Bayanihan" roughly translated means "helping your neighbor." House-moving is the most common depiction.)

just wondering

[phrostie]

where does the toilet go to?

I can see it now...

[careysb]

News alert of impending natural disaster comes in and the highways become clogged with "houses" ;-)

It's a start

[kungfugleek]

If we can't have flying cars, at least we can have walking houses.

Paranoid of foreclosure . . . ?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Walk away from your debt.

Literally.

Seriously, the starving artists must have a secret plan. I'll bet that house will just disappear someday, when nobody's looking.

"Hey where did that darn house run off to?"

Professor Frink's idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Frink: Well, as you can see, when the burglar trips the alarm, the house raises from it's foundations and runs down the street, round the corner to safety...
(The house falls over and bursts into flames)
Frink: Well the... the real humans won't uh... won't burn quite so fast in there, mw-hai.

Hydraulic?

[Anonymous Coward]

I work on 6th Degree of freedom (6 hydraulic legs) flight simulators and there's one thing that all the hydraulic ones have in common. After a few years they start pissing oil all over. No matter how well they are maintained, they always eventually leak. Part of it is the weight they're under, part of it is the seals start to wear.

I wonder how environmentally sound it would be to have a house that sags on one side and pisses hydraulic oil everywhere it goes. Not to mention that the owner would have to maintain the locomotion systems.

Re:Hydraulic?

[kronick]

The legs are actually powered by electric linear actuators. Somehow the media has started calling them "hydraulic." Better info here: http://www.n55.dk/MANUALS/WALKINGHOUSE/walkinghouse.html (except that says 12 actuators... there are 18)

Re:Hydraulic?

[jameskojiro]

It would be like being the owner of a dog that is older than 10 years old and has bladder control issues.

Only Larger

Re:There's that cool new invention called 'wheel'

[sFurbo]

Actually, it is, in Australia.



And sorry that was the joke and it went over my head, but at least one sibling post didn't get it

More Information from one of the designers

[kronick]

I'm the "MIT engineer" who worked on this and thought I'd mention a couple of things.

First, the Telegraph article is just silly reporting; the whole "runs away from floods" thing is pop media spin. For the original motivations for the project, read this: http://www.n55.dk/MANUALS/WALKINGHOUSE/walkinghouse.html

Second, yeah, it's contemporary art, not a piece of raw engineering or product design. N55 works entirely non-commercially, so the "pricetag" is not very relevant; you won't be able to buy one of these from us, but hopefully we will document things well enough that you can build something similar yourself if you'd like. The tetrahedral legs are of a unique design (as far as I know) that we want to share and the control software/hardware will all be explained and made available online in coming weeks. Art can be nerdy, too.

Third, I know it's slow and small and funny shaped. That's part of the point: to get people questioning the status quo of how we live and what we've been given to live in during recent times. But don't be so dismissive of radically different ideas... I can assure you that hexagonal prisms and truncated octahedrons are far more comfortable shapes than your boring ol' cube any day.

There's also a video on Youtube of it doing it's thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvxIB83Y0PA

Re:More Information from one of the designers

[Hesty Heffew]

can you make it dance like this ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUH3m6ZyW-g&feature=related

SIMPSONS DID IT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Professor Frink made a house that could run away down the block if it felt threatened by a burglar.

Re:There's that cool new invention called 'wheel'

[KiloByte]

And it's not even patented yet!

Wrong.

Moving house

[Opr33Opr33]

Moving house...Mobile house....Mobile home...Single wide trailer. Seriously, where I grew up there were whole neighborhoods that didn't bother to remove the axles or tow bars from their mobile house. They just planted rose bushes in the middle of the tow bar. If a hurricane is forecasted to hit, slap some tires on, cut the tie down straps, back up the truck, and off you go. Of course in our society, leaving your mobile home behind to the hurricane is a good way to get an upgrade from FEMA. (I guess that is where the 4. profit comes from)

Hut??

[half_chicken]

Omg It's Baba Yaga's 21st Century hut! (go google Baba Yaga, I know you want to) http://www.birdbluffstudio.com/hut.jpg

Re:There's that cool new invention called 'wheel'

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I seem to remember someone winning an IgNobel for patenting the wheel, http://pericles.ipaustralia.gov.au/ols/auspat/applicationDetails.do?applicationNo=2001100012
But apparently it was revoked. Never mind.

Howl's Moving ... Danish House

[slyborg]

Kind of prefer Miyazaki's idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauru_no_ugoku_shiro

Lost a digit...

[Firethorn]

Please substitute 1600 times the speed instead of 600. This thing is capable of 60 meters an hour. A standard RV should be capable of at least 60 mph, and a mile is 1,609.344 meters.

get out

[catbertscousin]

use your escape ladder?

Floating homes!

[Firethorn]

That's a really neat link, especially since I more or less thought of this in response to Katrina - build a house capable of floating, held in place by two or more anchoring poles. I was thinking more air cushion, but foam was considered.

A house overall might be quite heavy, but it's nothing compared to many ships, and you have a lot of square footage to work with. Weight per square foot isn't bad.

From what I've read about concrete, it's entirely possible that they might use the foam pellet variation - you mix the pellets in with the concrete, and end up with a lighter concrete - some mixes are substantially lighter than water. Heck, some variaties of concrete, even without foam, are lighter than water. Still, concrete by default isn't waterproof, so it wouldn't be a long term solution. Putting the concrete around a foam structure that also acts as insulation is a great idea.

More like crawling house actually

[ninel]

According to N55, the house can move at a top speed of 60m/h. Unless that's a misprint, the house better be waterproof and buoyant to protect against floods...

So it begins...

[$1uck]

Municipal Darwinism.

Bah!

[chaim79]

I won't be impressed until they go into luggage, or as I should say, "The Luggage".

Obligatory Simpsons

[DarkBlackFox]

http://www.hulu.com/watch/25857/the-simpsons-home-security-system

Dr. Frink would be proud.

Mud

[ka9dgx]

When there is a flood, there is mud... lots of soft gooshy mud, which things sink into... not the environment for something with legs and lots of vulnerable high-tech sensors to get sucked into.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Perfect resolution for the homeless problem.

£30,000 is a lot less than what is costs to chase away, arrest, or shelter many of the homeless in big cities.

Simpsons?

[Anonymous Coward]

Simpsons did it!

Been done...

[Deadstick]

...and Baba Yaga gets the royalties. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_yaga
rj

Re:Been done...

[Deadstick]

Crap, s-meister beat me to it.

rj

Japanese

[beansprouts]

Howl's Moving Castle.

Classic! :D

(So is Babayaga)

I for one...

[Trip6]

...welcome our new house overlords.

Think of the traffic

[alta]

This will not work in the densely populated where tsunami occur. Lets take a more comprehendable situation, Katrina and Metro New Orleans. Here we have 1 million people all trying to evacuate in cars. There were massive traffic jams, many abandoned cars, mass chaos, and a lot of people just stayed because they couldn't get out, even though they had transportation. Lets assume that half the households tried to leave, and each one left 4 to a car... That's 1,000,000/2/4... That's 125k cars. Four people to a car is generous. Massive traffic jams.

Now, lets assume that Indonesia is not more densly populoated (also generous.) But here we have the same amount of travellers in legged vehicles that walk (2.7mph) and are CONSIDERABLY larger. Imagine seeing thousands of these things with their legs all tangled up. I don't think ANYBODY in one of these things would get out alive.

For the purpose of escaping rising ocean levels and localized flooding, yeah, this would work. Escaping from a tsunami with thousands of other people doing the same? No way. /disclaimer It's obvious I didn't run spull check on this.

Re:Think of the traffic

[aurispector]

Sorry, I forgot to add /sarcasm. Just FYI.

Re:Think of the traffic

[master5o1]

Wait! 125k of these things all walking in the same direction? That's got to be the best army ever!

freshwater

[zogger]

If you are in Florida, it isn't too far to come up around north Atlanta and look at the boats on lake Lanier and Alatoona. With the drought or semi drought the past two years, plus the economy, there's a lot of deals on boats here. You'll pay to have them hauled back obviously, but there's the added bonus of no salt water rot in any of them.

Terrans well on our way to Flying Buildings

[ArmorFiend]

In StarCraft, Terran buildings fly. It's just an ability the Terrans build into all their buildings for free, because they like it. Its good to see that we're progressing towards that ideal, because it will really help us fight off the Zerg.

Re:Terrans well on our way to Flying Buildings

[stilz2]

No wonder it looks so familiar--that's a Terran barrack!

small is relative

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've ever been to Denmark, you might know that the size of this house is not necessarily smaller than the real houses that people live in...and I'm sure they pay significantly more.

Jason

Finally!

[DinDaddy]

Now there's and idea with legs!

Modern art can be "pointless" ...

[six025]

... but equally it can be a stimulator of new ideas ... and certainly it can inspire scientists or engineers to investigate new directions not previously conceived of. ... think of this as a proof of concept, rather than something you immediately rush to your local dealer for, cheque book in hand.

Peace,
Andy.

Re:Modern art can be "pointless" ...

[The_reformant]

Because no one has ever thought about putting a big box on legs before?

Modern art is only useful for inspiring gushing in morons.

Paralized with fear...

[fahrbot-bot]

There's an appropriate "I, for one, welcome...overlords" and "what could possibly go wrong" comment here, but I'm having a daymare about my house chasing me down the street yelling "wash me damit". I see a Futurama episode here.

Read the small print...

[pvjr]

*Calicifer not included.

Mobile Settlements on Mars?

[darkvizier]

This idea might be extended to use on Mars. A mobile settlement would be ideal, I think, in that it would allow exploration and you could move to take shelter from storms. Course, doors, windows and a chimney is a far stretch from an airlock and sustainable resources for maintaining life on another planet... but imagine mass produced housing pods, roaming around Mars. The next generation of pioneers... I hope I live to see the exodus. :-)

Re: Homeless problem?

[Red Flayer]

Perfect resolution for the homeless problem.

I didn't read the specs, but it looks heavy enough to do as you suggest.

The question is whether a cardboard box stuffed with newspapers provide sufficient crushing resistance to withstand however many kg/m2 are exerted by each leg when it is walking.

And even better, it's not 30k GBP per person. I'd expect a single one of these units could "resolve" hundreds of homeless problems.

Forget Starcraft, thnk Star Wars!

[Roadkills-R-Us]

With enough AI, these things will evolve solar panel wings and become Tie Fighters.

MIT, the Mother of the Empire!

solar contest homes must be "fully functional"

[peter303]

In the biennial college international collegiate solar house decathalon the resulting house must be fully functional, save plumbing connect. They transported to the DC mall where inhabitants must perform a weeks worth of living functions like meals and television.

Obligatory Simpsons Reference

[TerribleNews]

Prof Frink: Of course the real humans... won't... won't burn so fast...

Links

[Plekto]

As usual, the original posting doesn't link to the actual site.

http://www.n55.dk/
There is a lot of good information about the group of designers and more about the structure itself.

http://www.n55.dk/MANUALS/WALKINGHOUSE/walkinghouse.html
Several pages plus more pictures of it.

It weighs 1200KG(~2650lbs), so getting it trucked to remote places as an emergency shelter(they do this a lot in Canada and Alaska) or for workers. If you've seen that show Ice Road Truckers, you know what a major pain trucking shelters up to the middle of nowhere is. At just over a ton each, plus the fact that they are essentially self-leveling, these have many uses.

Oh - and for that application, a computer to run the "walking" could just be replaced with manual controls to get it level and then lock it in pace. Probably save 5-10K off of the cost as well.

Hex House

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting concept, enjoyed the picture. If you want a house to walk that's a good design concept. In my opinion, if it is going to be so close to round, I would make it round and have an inner shell that stays upright while the outer shell rolls. It would not take the terrain as well, be as versatile, but could use major roads. Would be fun in an earthquake. Or make it a half-track hexagon. . .

RE: DUI

[Anonymous Coward]

The amount of DUI's will surely double with this walking house...for shame.

Um I think this was invented in 1958 with WHEELS!

[greymond]

I know it's crazy, but they invented these houses that actually have wheels and are able to be driven across the country. In fact, they even have places that allow you to park these moving houses for extended periods of time.

http://www.winnebagoind.com/products/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnebago_Industries

ATHLETE is much cooler.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/videos/technology/athlete-20070806/

You are standing in a open field

[hansamurai]

You are standing in a open field, west of a white house.

The house walks away.

Re:Slashdot has useful pics instead of weird icons

[brianez21]

Call me greedy, but I wish there was more than one picture of the thing...

Archigram, Ron Herron, 1964

[Anonymous Coward]

The Walking City has been around for 44 years. Just because it hasn't walked into your area yet doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

See: http://www.vitruvius.com.br/arquitextos/arq053/arq053_01_05.jpg

wouldn't a trailer be smarter?

[FewClues]

Wouldn't a 5th Wheel tailer offer far more facility and a lot better appearing home? Wouldn't you have better luck moving it at road speeds as opposed to walking speeds. OK, it works. NICE! Now where is that RV dealer located again?

The real people won't burn that quickly...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I recall seeing something quite like this on the Simpsons which leads me to believe that this won't work...

Entitled to your own opinion.

[Firethorn]

You're certainly entitled to your own opinion, but there are limits to the number of people who can go your way.

As a result, my goal is to compensate as well as possible. It's entirely possible to eliminate much of the noise - tall buildings with you far up can help eliminate ground noise, proper construction methods can help eliminate internal noise transmission between apartments. The roof of a sufficiently large building can be set up as a recreation area/park/garden for the inhabitants - perfect for those who don't want to maintain their own. The greenery can also help keep heat/pollution down. If that's not enough, you can have the southern facing be greenhouses and run the air you're recycling through there.

In addition if designs enable 90% of travel to be on foot and elevator, you can virtually eliminate one of the biggest sources of pollution, noise and chemical in cities - cars.

Cities today are far cleaner than a hundred years ago, and we can make them cleaner yet.

Far from 'all terrain'.

[Firethorn]

It's far from 'all terrain'. By the looks of it, it'd have trouble with paths that cars would be able to handle. At 60 meters/hour, it's slower than people, so an electric golf cart would work better than a tool box.

Filled with batteries it'd exceed the strength of the legs, and it'd be cheaper to toss a generator in the back of a truck, maybe with a battery pack and transfer panel to provide uninteruppted power.

For that matter, a hybrid truck would be cheaper and more useful.

Though I do like the idea of construction robots. Just don't think that legs are in the solution for most of them.

Taco mission

[TheMagnetSticks]

I hope there is a speaker or conveniently placed window so that I can order my tacos and giant burrito at a drive-thru.

a great day for Archigram

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they're only about 40 years behind schedule, but it looks like the beginning stages of the Walking City:

http://www.archigram.net/projects_pages/walking_city.html

Theo Jansen's Beach Beasts

[jamrock]

By sheer coincidence I was reading last night about Theo Jansen, the Dutch artist whose wind-powered kinetic sculptures were feature in a Wired.com article a few years ago. Check out his website, Strandbeest (Beach beasts), which features amazing must-see videos of some of his creations.

His multi-legged "beasts" are constructed almost completely of ingeniously hinged yellow plastic tubing, and feature membranes that wave and flap in the wind like the wings of insects. These serve to store compressed air into what appears to be plastic soda or water bottles, which each "creature" uses for propulsion. Jansen leaves the sculptures to wander on beaches, and guides their "evolution" by adopting the "genetic code" (mainly by varying the lengths of the plastic tubes) from more successful creatures into other designs. There is a startlingly alien eeriness, as well as fascinating beauty, in watching these skeletal assemblages of yellow tubes sitting on a beach, translucent membranes undulating in the wind, then suddenly walking away for a few steps with remarkable grace.

The Walking House concept is evocative of one of Jansen's beasts called the Animaris Rhinoceros Transport, a wind-powered two-ton design resembling a titanic crab that can carry passengers. Jansen is working on a 12-ton version called the Animaris Mammoth, which incorporates several interior rooms. I'm quite surprised that there is no mention of this remarkable visionary in such an appropriate Slashdot thread. This guy will make everyone who thought they had mad Tinkertoy skillz feel like dolts.

Re:There's that cool new invention called 'wheel'

[dullnev]

"An Australian man has been issued with an innovation patent for the wheel after setting out to test the workability of a new national patent system." http://www.ipmenu.com/archive/AUI_2001100012.pdf http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn965-wheel-patented-in-australia.html