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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.

The Toyota FT-EVII is a new electric concept car based on the iQ platform.

(Credit: Automotive News)

Although a leader in hybrid cars, generally conservative Toyota has seemed uninterested in developing electric cars--until now. At the 2009 Tokyo Motor Show, Toyota unveiled the FT-EVII, an electric car concept.

Toyota does away with a traditional steering wheel in favor of modern art.

(Credit: Automotive News)

In putting together the FT-EVII, Toyota used its own off-the-shelf technologies, such as the iQ platform and components from its Synergy hybrid system. Although not on sale in the U.S., gasoline- and diesel-powered Toyota iQs are sold in Japan and the U.K. For the power train, Toyota went to lithium ion batteries for the FT-EVII, as opposed to the nickel-metal-hydride power pack from its current hybrid vehicles.

Where many electric cars in development, such as the Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi iMiev, are specified to get about 100 miles range, Toyota only proposes 56 miles for the FT-EVII, and a top speed of 62 mph. These figures limit its use to sprawling metropolises, such as Tokyo, London, and New York.

Toyota also wanted to break away from traditional notions of automotive performance, so did away with a conventional steering wheel or foot pedals. Instead, the FT-EVII gets a weird-looking yoke, a piece of sculpture that supports an instrument cluster, navigation device, and a cup holder.

Toyota modified its hybrid badge, replacing the blue inset with a yellow one.

(Credit: Automotive News)

The FT appellation, which we previously saw when Toyota announced the FT-86 concept, also on display at the Tokyo Motor Show, stands for Future Technology. We expect to see many more FT concept cars from Toyota in the coming years.

An exciting concept from the world's most boring automaker.

(Credit: Toyota)

Toyota FT-86 concept (2009 Tokyo Motor Show preview)

After months of rumors and rumblings, Toyota has released photos of its small sports car collaboration with Subaru, the Toyota FT-86 Concept. What follows is a very exciting concept from the world's most boring car company.

The FT-86 is a compact 2+2 that seeks to recapture the spirit of the 1980s AE86 Corolla GT-S (better known as the Hachiroku) of drifting fame. While most of the details are still mostly shrouded in mystery, we've got a little bit of meaty info. Under the hood, we should find a variant of Subaru's 2.0-liter boxer four-cylinder engine--dubbed the C-45 Boxer--sending 200-250 horsepower through a six-speed manual transmission (thank you!) and onward to the rear wheels.

(Credit: Toyota)

(Credit: Toyota)

The interior of the concept is appropriately, err, conceptual. We don't expect any of the sci-fi gauges or fabric buttons to make it to production. Whether the production concept will wear the Corolla GT-S badge when it hits showroom floors is also up in the air.

If/when the FT-86 reaches the market, it'll find itself facing stiff competition from Nissan's more powerful 370Z and Hyundai's turbocharged Genesis Coupe 2.0T. However, if Toyota can take a page from the Mazda MX-5's book and create a balanced, fun to drive, low-powered (and low-cost) coupe, it may be able to carve a nice niche for itself.

Stay tuned to our continuing coverage of the 2009 Tokyo Motor Show for more details as they emerge.

Sony's flexible OLED-based Vaio notebook--not coming to a store near you.

(Credit: Scott Ard/CNET)

CHIBA, Japan--Perhaps to distract from the fact that it has no organic light-emitting diode TV on display here at Ceatec 2009, Sony is instead showing off conceptual uses for its flexible OLED technology.

Mind you, these are just prototypes, nothing even close to a real product, like the XEL-1 TV that Sony actually sells but is notably absent from its booth here. But the ways the company is thinking of perhaps using its flexible display tech are certainly cool.

Take the dual OLED screen Vaio notebook. It features the 0.2 mm OLED on both the screen and keyboard area. It's not a functioning prototype, though, so it doesn't do much besides sit in a plexiglass case and look pretty.

Also showcased here is the company's e-book Reader with an OLED screen and a futuristic update of the time-worn Walkman brand, in which the audio player takes the form of a wearable wrist device.

As cool as those are, they're just concepts. And none of them can make us forget that Sony was once the leader in commercializing OLED TVs and now seems content to let LG and Samsung take charge.

Vaio with flexible OLED screen.

(Credit: Scott Ard/CNET)

The Sony Reader and Walkman redone with flexible OLED technology.

(Credit: Scott Ard/CNET)