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Everything in the Openarch house is connected and can be used to communicate. Through the internet connection, any device such as a mobile phone or tablet can access, control, and monitor data, temperature, appliances, lighting, power usage, and social media. With an emphasis on flexibility, Kinect-based gestural interfaces and video mapped projections can also control the same elements as well as moveable walls and a customizable wallpaper projection.

Bumsuk Lim, a transportation design professor at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, demands that his students focus on how to move people and goods from point A to point B in an urban setting. One of the concepts borne out of that elegantly simple directive is Deus Ex Machina, designed by former student Jake Loniak. Part exoskeleton, part motorbike, the three-wheeled vehicle runs on lithium-ion batteries boosted by ultracapacitors (which offer better acceleration). Worn almost as a jacket, machine is steered via "muscles" mechanized by pressured air and activated by the driver's gestures. The Deus Ex Machina is projected to top out at 75 mph and is meant to be a sports model among wearable vehicles (note the lack of storage). The concept, Lim says, "solves some of the fundamental mobility issues, but is still the kind of exciting vehicle that people are like, 'I want to try that. I want to go to work in that.' You can't forget the emotional link between the buyer and the vehicle."