Brilio.net/en - Urban life has made our lives so busy that its hard to find the time to work out. But these Chinese designers have proposed a design concept to make you work out at least twice a week. The students of Dalian Nationalities University, China, designed a stationery bicycle that is combined with a washing machine that needs human power to make it work called Bike Washing Machine (BWM or BiWa).
The washing machine drum is incorporated with the front bike wheel, which saves some space. The drum rotates as soon as you pedal manually and the attached generator works as a small power plant to produce electricity. The electricity is then used for the display screen or stored for future use. This would surely save some on the electricity bills or laundry coins.
The designers dont mention if water-filling can be done automatically, but surely detergent and water may need to be added and drained before more water is added for rinsing.
The design is proposed to Tuvie, a website where designers can share ideas, and the BiWa designer team is currently building the prototype. There were some former ideas about combining chores and exercises like the Wheel concept that combines hamster wheel, treadmill and washing machine together. The design was proposed by Si Hyeong Ryu from South Korea to 2014 Electrolux Design Lab competition. Richard Hewitt, a design student at Sheffield Hallam University, has also developed another similar design combining washing machine and bicycle device earlier in 2011.
But the BiWa designers, Xuefei Liu, Di Fang, Linhao Su, Zhanbing Li, Xiaoyu Gao Xueyi Wang, Wen Fan, Liying Zhu, Deqian Zhao, Huan Li, Mengmeng Hu and Weiwei Li, are confident in their concept. They said, Riding a bike is a popular exercise, washing laundry is something that you might do on daily basis or at least once a week, unless you keep buying new clothes and underwear, so why not combine them into a single useful equipment/appliance?
Looking at BiWas former competitors that failed to reach the market, it is much more reasonable to have BiWa at home for its compact size. Plus, if its going to be made in China, it must be affordable for every household to have. So lets see if we can see this device can be sold for public soon, as we are still looking for a reason to make us sweat!