Скачать или смотреть Why did Google bet $1 million on Shweeb?

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(CNN) -- Living in Tokyo, Japan, during the late '90s, Geoffrey Barnett found it extremely difficult -- even dangerous -- to ride his bicycle to work every day.

"The traffic is incredible, and there's so much pollution," said Barnett, an Australian who worked in the city as an English teacher.

His students shared his frustration, and they would often talk about Tokyo's jam-packed streets during class.

"It was always a topic of discussion that motivated the students to talk, because it was a part of their life as well," Barnett recalled.

Out of those frequent discussions evolved Barnett's idea for Shweeb, a system of personal, pedal-powered monorail pods that he hopes can one day become an alternative form of urban transit. With Shweeb, pods hang from an elevated track that, theoretically, would stretch to destinations throughout a city.

"Cumbersome, jammed-up cities of today should be rendered into completely accessible worlds once you've got a way to shoot over the traffic," said Barnett, who derived the name Shweeb from the German word "schweben," which means to hang, hover or float. He left Tokyo in 2000 to design a prototype.

Barnett's vision received a significant boost last month when Google awarded Shweeb $1 million for research and development. Shweeb was one of five winners of Project 10^100, Google's "call for ideas to change the world."

The public suggested more than 150,000 categories for Google to consider. Five were eventually chosen, including "drive innovation in public transportation."

"The cost of innovation in public transportation is often very high, sometimes in the billions of dollars," Google spokesman Jamie Yood said. "We looked for a concrete project where the funding available to us with Project 10^100 has the potential to yield impact. Shweeb's innovative approach toward low-cost and environmentally friendly urban transport has the potential for significant impact in the future."

During its global search, Google was able to see a Shweeb prototype in action. Since November 2007, Shweeb has been a star attraction at Agroventures, an adventure park in Rotorua, New Zealand. People of all ages can race the bullet-shaped capsules on a closed track there.

"We've been able to prove a lot of good things about the technology: that we can get the transmission working at high speeds so we can swing around corners, that it's efficient," said Barnett, 40. "It's going faster [up to about 28 mph] than most of our customers would be going on a bicycle.

"The downside is that because it's set up as a racetrack, we don't really give the customers the chance to enjoy it as an efficient way to move. They're under a lot of pressure to put in all their energy and get a good [lap] time."

Barnett said the first concern people usually have about Shweeb is that it might be hard work, but he said it's anything but.

"Although it is pedal-powered like a bicycle, it's got none of the resistances that are inherent in a bicycle, being that you're riding feet-first into the wind with a very small frontal area," he said. "The wind resistance is really low compared to a bicycle. ... I can see people of any age and any fitness level being able to cover a kilometer [0.62 miles] without any effort at all, let alone sweat."

Barnett envisions people using Shweeb -- which uses no fuel, no batteries and has no emissions -- for short trips in major urban centers where residential towers are relatively close to central business districts.

Project 10^100: http://www.project10tothe100.com/inde...

Official Link: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovati...