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August 12, 2005

Future Door!

So we all have fantasies about what the doors in the future will be like, will it be the lame left-to-right stupid noise making doors of Star Trek? Will they be the dangerously fast potentially fatal vertically sliding doors of the Death Star? Or maybe some circular closing steel iris design like the Stargate? Tanaka Seisakusyo's idea is a series of strips that open just enough to let someone (or something) through. Its based on IR sensors detecting exactly where and how much the strips need to be opened. According to the video, its barely functional and extremely impractical, but its important for Japan to constantly convince everyone else they live 50 years in the future. Unfortunately, I think the good old fashioned turn-the-handle-with-your-hand-and-pull method will probably last us the next 10,000 years. (unless we make room-to-room matter transporters first, doors R s0 t3h g4y!1!!)