Here comes ‘Crab’ the micro-car!

AS our cities get busier, parking spaces become harder to come by and it can be difficult to squeeze into a tight spot during rush hour. But German engineers have come up with an innovative solution — a small electric car that can turn on the spot, shrink in size and even move sideways, like a crab, so it can park itself.

This EOssc2 is described as an ‘ultra flexible micro-car for mega cities’.

Crabs have a wide flat body to make it easier to squeeze into narrow spaces and the EOssc2 works in a similar way; it turns its wheels to manoeuvre the crab and mimic this movement. Its unusual design also features a forward tilt and doors that open like the DeLorean in Back to the Future.

Created at the DFKI Robotics Centre in Bremen, Germany, the concept vehicle is intended to be semi-autonomous. The car’s computer and its auto-navigation system enable it to park itself, ‘even within narrow and congested roads,’ the firm said.

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CAN you dare to walk on the world’s most thrilling or terrifying glass bridge? This horseshoe-shaped glass walkway in Chongqing, China, has recently been opened to visitors; it extends 87.5ft from the edge of a cliff, allowing visitors to feel as though they are walking on air with the valley floor 2,350ft below their feet.

With jaw-dropping panoramic views from its observation deck, it is the longest cantilever bridge in the world, beating Arizona’s Grand Canyon Skywalk by 16.4ft.

Located in the Longgang National Geological Park in south-west China, the bridge has been named Yuanduan, meaning ‘At the end of the clouds’. It can accommodate up to 200 visitors at once, with each one paying an admission fee of 60 Chinese yuan (approximately £6.30 or $9.60) to spend 30 minutes on the see-through floor.Officials said the bridge was designed to withstand an 8.0-magnitude earthquake and level 14 typhoon, China Radio International reported.