Living in a big city has it’s obvious challenges. Simply navigating the streets in a timely fashion often means countless life threatening decisions and maneuvers as you cross the urban landscape. Falling even a couple seconds behind can mean the difference between getting home at 5pm and 9pm — all because you missed that one subway or bus. Smartphones and mobile apps are becoming increasingly ingrained into our daily lives so much so that many cities have apps to make finding out public transportation times easy, quick, and effortless. But there’s an easier way. Why not utilize something that we city dwellers stare at everyday?
The Smart Manhole Cover is a concept created by Cheolyeon Jo & Youngsun Lee that turns your ordinary manhole cover into a smart dish (for lack of better words) of information concerning public transit times. The real kicker is that the manhole uses rainwater to power the display and digital innards making it a novel green, grid load reducing implementation. As illustrated by several more images inside, operating the manhole cover is simple. Step on the right or left sides of the cover for 2 seconds to display various forms of transit times and schedules. Depending on your city, these will of course vary between subway, train, bus, trolley, etc. It’s certainly something that gets those interested in future tech all excited. And who can blame them. Such gadgetry is just the tip of the ice berg of what the future holds for us. Now the only question that remains is how much would these cost?
Step inside for a more detailed look at how this hi-tech manhole cover works…
