Crave

Mini's new concept is based on its upcoming crossover model.

(Credit: Mini)

Before its upcoming crossover enters production in 2010, Mini is already using this new platform for a concept.

Mini removed doors and roof to get passengers in touch with nature.

(Credit: Mini)

For the Beachcomber, Mini stripped off the doors and roof, opening up the cabin like a dune buggy or jeep. Lest occupants suffer sunburn or freezing rain, Mini includes what it calls "lightweight door and roof elements" that can be "installed within a few minutes."

For its sand-crawling duties, the Beachcomber uses a new all-wheel-drive that Mini calls ALL4, which will be a feature of the upcoming crossover. The suspension is raised, as well, with large wheels providing extra ground clearance.

Mini has used concepts in the past to herald its upcoming new models, such as the Mini Clubman. But, at least as far as North America is concerned, the Beachcomber heralds nothing. When the Mini crossover enters production next year, it won't be sold in North America.

The Mini Beachcomber will debut at the 2010 Detroit auto show.

(Credit: Synaptics)

If you thought tilting and swiping your iPhone was the future, just take a look at the Synaptics Fuse. It's a concept phone that points to how we'll be fingering, tilting, and even squeezing our phones in 2010 and beyond. We're lighting the fuse on this innovative concept and standing well back.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based touch-screen and trackpad manufacturer Synaptics has headed up a coalition of interface experts to produce what it calls a "next-gen mobile phone concept." It packs a 94mm (3.7-inch) WVGA AMOLED touch screen with a cool interface, rolling icons past the screen like they're on the surface of a 3D ball.

Read more of "Synaptics Fuse: Multi-input concept phone gets a grip" at Crave UK.

(Credit: Franziska Dierschke)

This campy camera gun is, quite literally, that. The Aimat is a squirt-gun-looking digital camera that you, well, point and shoot. Conceived by designer Franziska Dierschke, it's a concept device and not for sale--and for good reason. We can't imagine packing this piece through airport customs or even any sensitive area for that matter.

One can also expect the picture quality to be pretty Lomo-esque. Still, despite its "for laughs" intentions, this "firearm" could be aiming to be a shortlived novelty, given its notable lack of a viewfinder, zoom function, memory expansion options, and all the other niceties we expect in our cameras today.

(Credit: Franziska Dierschke)

(Source: Crave Asia via Tomel)

View the Peugeot BB1 concept photo gallery

(Credit: Benoit Solivellas/CNET)

Our colleagues in Paris got to drive Peugeot's BB1 concept car, a rare opportunity as concept cars usually get rolled out for display in a few auto shows, then never see the light of day again. The BB1 is small, designed as a city car, and runs on electricity, getting a range of 75 miles.

The BB1 includes an iPod dock mounted in the center of the steering wheel, which might prove to be a problem for the airbag. With an iPhone in the dock, the BB1 becomes Internet-enabled.

NBA 2K10 is still on top--but only by a hair.

With the NBA season in full swing, we thought we'd take a moment to check out this year's offering of digital hoops games, which really boils down to 2K Sports' NBA 2K10 vs. EA Sports' NBA Live 10.

Last year, the contest wasn't even close, with 2K9 trouncing Live in a blowout that made it easy to choose which game to buy. However, this year EA Sports' Canada-based development team delivered a much more compelling game. At the same time, while 2K10's developer Visual Concepts has definitely made some improvements, including a new My Player mode and the usual upgrades to player models and animations, this year's installment hasn't introduced anything truly eye-opening. The net-net is you have two solid games that are hard to choose between.

Here's the skinny:

(Credit: MobileandNotebook)

Over at the Taiwan Broadband show, Ericsson's vision for the portable computer of 2020 uses a pico-projected screen and laser-projected keyboard. And though the company's got a rough prototype (pictured above), they imagine it ultimately squeezing into this bizarre spider-leg tripod design:

(Credit: MobileandNotebook)

It'd have essentials like wireless broadband connectivity and a battery, but I'm hoping we'll have cooler stuff than a laser-projected keyboard by 2020. Their time has come and gone already, no? Less of that, more interactive holographic display technology, please. More wacky 2020 shenanigans at Ericsson via MobileandNotebook. And a video after the jump.

MIT's concept robot head mounts on the dashboard to assist with navigation.

(Credit: MIT)

MIT intends to revolutionize GPS navigation by making it friendly and predictive, using a friendly robot helper to anticipate your needs. The Affective Intelligent Driving Agent (AIDA) is a robot head on an articulated neck, reminiscent of movie robots from the 1980s, that mounts in the center of the dashboard.

It incorporates an expressive "face" that can smile, look sad, show warning signs, and even wink at you. AIDA was developed as a collaboration between the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab, MIT's SENSEable City Lab, and Volkswagen Group of America's Electronics Research Lab.

AIDA's expressive behaviors are designed to endear the device to you as it helps in your daily navigation. The robot learns your daily commute and which areas you frequent for which purposes.

For example, if you always head to a particular district in your city around dinner time, it will assume you like to eat dinner there. After it memorizes your commute, it will automatically plug in your route to work when you get into the car on a weekday morning. If you go to a hotel for a dalliance every Thursday at noon, it will probably give you a wink and a knowing grin as it maps the route for you.

(Credit: Inventables)

You know how annoying it is when you stick your bread in the toaster and accidentally set the dial too high, and when your toast finally pops up, it's darker than you want, or burned?

Granted, most of us over the age of, say, 6 are probably able to handle an ordinary toaster most of the time. But don't you want to watch your toast, well, toasting? Don't you want to see the magic happen?

This concept transparent glass toaster lets you do just that. Or, rather, it wants to let you do just that. Yeah, I was disappointed, too, when I read that the transparent heating glass technology does not currently heat the glass enough to toast bread. But the vendor thinks that a little R&D (and, I'm guessing, a lot of VC cash) could solve that problem.

At any rate, it looks cool.

The maple seed device seen next to actual samara seeds.

(Credit: Eric Schurr/A. James Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland)

Remember as a kid being entertained by how maple tree seeds (or samara fruit) would spin like helicopters as they fell around you in the fall? I do, and that's why I love this prototype rotorcraft by graduate students at the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering.

It's a remote-controlled monocopter with a design based heavily on the aerodynamic and geometric properties of maple seeds. Researchers have tried for years to create an unmanned aerial vehicle that could mimic maple seeds' spiraling fall. The results out of Maryland are awesome.

As you can see in the video after the jump, the patent-pending device uses just one blade to take off, as well as a stabilizer to keep it steady. It looks weird, but it works. This is a great example of nature influencing science.

The students say they've created he world's smallest controllable single-winged rotorcraft, with the most minuscule having a maximum dimension of about 3.7 inches and a wing equal in size to a natural samara. Graduate student Evan Ulrich says he thinks the 'copter could be mass produced as a toy for less than $100, which even sounds high to us given that one of the parts experimented with is a vibrating motor from a pager.

There could also be military or rescue applications: a flyer fitted with a small camera could easily be sent across an area looking for survivors--or targets.

But no matter what the flyer ends up being used for, one thing is sure: I want one badly.