By Evan Ackerman
Although it’s called “Dandella” and is modeled after a flower, the resemblance to the glowing finger of everyone’s favorite stranded alien botanist is uncanny. Dandella is a handheld GPS device that bends to physically point you where you’re going, whether it’s a GPS location or another Dandella, via a built in GPS chip. You can’t interface directly with Dandella by itself, but it has internal Bluetooth to talk to cellphones or computers. It charges wirelessly via a USB base station, artfully designed like a vase.
This is only a concept so far, but it won the 2006 International Design Competition Osaka and the designers are looking for potential commercial development. It’s quite a step forward considering the current complexity of GPS devices (and just about everything else), and has the intuitive and useful potential that just screams future. More pictures available here.
