Wang Kang, a 25-year-old office worker from Shanghai, China, surprised his colleagues a few days ago, when he came to work wearing a home-made Iron Man suit.

It happened on June 3rd, 2011. Kang walked into his office building wearing a metallic-looking costume and was immediately stopped by security. After explaining to them that he was actually an employee there they allowed him to go through to the office area where all his work mates stopped what they were doing and stared at the real-life Iron Man that just walked in. Everyone was speechless at first, but proceeded to congratulate Wang Kang for his incredible achievement, and started taking pictures. One of these ended up on China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo, and the young self-taught costume maker became an internet sensation.

Wang Kang got the idea of making his own Iron Man costume after seeing the 2008 blockbuster starring Robert Downey Junior, but actually started working on it on February 26, 2011, right in the living room of his rented apartment. The costume is mainly made of high density foam, wires and tubes, for which he only paid 3,000 yuan ($460). It also features the famous arc reactor which he made from glass. The whole thing took him three months to finish, but the reactions on his colleagues’ faces were totally worth the time and effort. After the office test, Kang took to the streets where he left everyone stunned, as well.

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American designer Andrew Schneider has used conductive thread to sew photo-voltaic panels together in a Solar Bikini that allows you to charge your favorite gadgets while getting a nice tan.

30-year-old Schneider says ‘I use 40 individual paper-thin flexible, photo-voltaic panels for each bikini. I sew them together over a normal bikini using soft-conductive thread,’ adding that it takes him around 80 hours to painstakingly sew the panels. Every swimsuit is made to measure and costs as much as a conventional designer bikini, $200.

The Solar Bikini allows its wearer to connect any modern gadget via the USB ports sewn into the fabric, meaning you’ll never run out of juice at  the beach, ever again. ‘Anything that you can power or charge through a USB connection you can power and charge using the solar bikini, assuming of course you’re out and about under the sun.’ This ingenious yet fashionable garment doesn’t take away the pleasure of going into the water, all wearers have to do is unplug their gadgets before going in and making sure the USB ports are dry before reconnecting them.

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Remember the 80’s? Man, those were the days, right? Actually I don’t remember, I was born in 1984, so pretty much everything before 1990 is a big blur. But one thing I do recall is how popular the original NES video-game console was back then. If you remember you’re first Super Mario playing days I’m sure you’re going to love the tribute a group of Dutch students prepared for Nintendo’s legendary machine.

Electrical Engineering students from TU Delft, in the Netherlands, have created an impressive replica of the NES controller, 30 times larger than the original. The overgrown Nintendo Entertainment System controller was assembled in the town square and attracted a lot of young Super Mario fans eager to test the  unique gadget, with their feet. Since the controller was 3.6 by 1.6 meters in size the only way to properly operate it was with your feet. So players just jumped on them and played Nintendo Classics like Tetris or Super Mario on a big six meter wide LED screen.

Unfortunately, the largest functioning NES controller hasn’t gained a spot in the Guinness Book of Records, because there was no official delegation on the scene.

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This revolutionary kiss transmission device is still under development at the Kajimoto Laboratory, at the University of Electro-Communications, and its creators hope it will soon be able to effectively transmit the feeling of a kiss over long distances.

A kiss is really a complex thing, if you think about it, and there are a lot of things to consider in order to truly replicate it using a device. So far, the researchers at the Kajimoto Laboratory have only come up with a gadget that replicates the movement of the tongue. “If you take one device in your mouth and turn it with your tongue, the other device turns in the same way. If you turn it back the other way, then your partner’s turns back the same way, so your partner’s device turns whichever way your own device turns.” says one of the bright minds working on the project.

“It is achieved only by motor rotations, and you control the rotation positions via PC. It is called a bilateral control, and the turn angle information is sent reciprocally by both devices to maintain the same position. Right now the values are handled by one PC, but if a system is put together to handle the values over a network, then it would be easy for this operation to be conducted remotely.” One of the top YouTube comments said it best: Imagine using this over the internet and you hit a lag spike. It stalls for 10 seconds, and then all the motions comes at once and rips your tongue out.

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Many of you probably know him as “The Transformers Guy from American Idol”, but Drew Beaumier is actually a young inventor who managed to create a fully functional Transformers outfit.

25-year-old Beaumier, from California, has always been a huge Transformers fan, but although the idea of building a geeky Transformers costume hit him a few years back, it wasn’t until he saw the advertisement for a good condition Power Wheels car that he actually began working on it. Using only a box of tools, glue and spare parts from WallMart, Drew took apart the second hand toy car and attached the parts to a sports body suit. It took him eight weeks of working in his garage to finish the masterpiece, but it was well worth the time.

With wheels attached to both his hands and legs, the geeky inventor can crouch into a car and roll down the street, or stand up and pose as a real-life Transformer. Not bad for a guy who not so long ago was struggling for money and doing lousy bar jobs. Now Drew makes a lot more entertaining tourists in Hollywood and taking photos with other Transformers fans. His ingenious suit has also helped him win a big cash prize on Halloween, for the last three years, which actually helped pay it off.

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A group of Japanese scientists have created a doll-like mobile phone they say is designed to make you feel closer to the person you’re talking to. No, this is not a joke…

Japan has been at the forefront of technological research and development for a long time, but some of the things they’ve come up over the years were incredibly weird and creepy. Case in point the latest mobile phone prototype designed by researcher Takashi Minato assisted by a team of scientists. He has created a human-shaped cell phone with a skin-like outer layer that is supposed to help people feel closer to the person they’re communicating with.

The current prototype is slightly larger than the palm of a hand, designed to look like a human and has a soft outer layer that heats and cools in a similar way human skin does. A speaker is installed in the creepy humanoid head of the handheld gadget, and the microphone is located at the bottom, where the feet should be. It also has a light-emitting diode that turns blue when the phone is in use and red when it’s in stand-by mode. Minato and his colleagues hope to add image and voice recognition in the near future.

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An 11-meters-high, 21-ton heavy statue of Autobots leader Optimus Prime has recently been unveiled in one of the squares of Shenyang City, China. According to Chinese sources, this is the biggest Transformers replica ever created, beating the previous record (also set by China) by only one meter. Just like all the other Optimus Prime statues I’ve featured on Oddity Central in the past, this latest one was assembled from various old car parts, taken from 20 automobiles.

The world’s tallest Optimus Prime model was completed yesterday and can now be admired outside the “Guangzhou Street” metro station, in Shenyang. I didn’t know Asia was so big on the Transformers franchise, seeing it has its own giant robot creations, like Gundam or Tetsujin, but the most impressive Transformers statues so far were created in mainland China and Taiwan.

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They make people look like they’ve been chewing on glow sticks, but the LED smiles created by designers Motoi Ishibashi and Daito Manabe are the new rage in Japan.

Originally created as an experiment, the LED smile is currently used in a commercial for the winter sale of a popular Japanese clothing store, and are quickly becoming one of the most sought-after fashion accessories in Japan. LED smiles are easily fixed to one’s teeth and glow different colors when you smile. Best used in the dark, these unusual gadgets change color wirelessy, through a computer interface.

Although LED smiles aren’t yet available for purchase, Ishibashi and Manabe are currently offering workshops across Japan, teaching people how to create their own.

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The SEGA Corporation has released a wacky toilet prototype, called SEGA Toylet, that lets you play video games with your urine stream. Just when you thought Japanese toilets couldn’t get any weirder, right?

Since the conventional gaming industry is getting pretty crowded these days, Japanese video gaming giant decided to try its luck in a whole new, untapped niche – toilet gaming. It actually isn’t s stupid as it sounds; whether they try to clean the toilet bowl with their stream, or aim it at a certain point, for some reason guys can’t help play with their urine stream, so why not capitalize on that?

The SEGA Toylet features a pressure sensor strategically placed in the public urinal, and a small display that shows the data from the sensor in the form of video games. So far, SEGA has come up with four games for their toilet entertainment system:

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I know it’s a few days past Christmas but I couldn’t pas by this news.

Nanotechnologists at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, Produced what they believe to be the world’s smallest Christmas card, the image of a Christmas Tree engraved on a piece of glass, a very small piece of glass, invisible to the naked eye.

“The card is 200 micro-meters wide by 290 micro-meters tall. To put that into some sort of perspective, a micro-meter is a millionth of a meter; the width of a human hair is about 100 micro-meters,” explains David Cumming, professor at the University of Glasgow.

To make it easier for you to imagine its real dimensions I should tell you that on an area the size of a postage stamp you could fit around 8,276 of these cards. Color was also added using a process called plasmon resonance.

Scientists had the sole purpose of explaining what nano-technology is capable of and say that, while the card is just a demonstration, domains like the electronics industry find this technology very useful.

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A Ukrainian IT company posted some photos of toys its staff created from various hard disk components, to show off their creativity. Vist officials also added they are very proud of their employees’ ingenuity, but this doesn’t mean they have too much free time on their hands. The toys were created during breaks and in-between creation and testing of company applications.

While they just look like cool metal models, the hard disk toys created by Vist are actually functional. The bird’s neck and legs are mobile, and the cool-looking quad has front and rear suspension and a small engine allows it to roll around.

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Have you ever wished there was an easy way to take your computer everywhere you go? No, I don’t mean laptops, tablets or smartphones, but the old trusty desktop.

Stephen Popa, from Portalnd, Oregon USA, has definitely given this idea a lot of thought and came up with this beautiful casemod he called “Scooterputer” – a computer casemod that you actually ride, like you would a normal scooter. Stephen showcased his original invention shortly after introducing the world to “Rog-R” – the world’s first remote-controlled gaming casemod.

The Scooterputer is made up of a Thermaltake Element V case housing components like an Intel i7 processor, 4GB RAM, GTS 250 graphics card, three RAIDed hard drives, USB 3.0 port, dual layer DVD burner, Thermaltake TR2 1200 Watt power supply and a Thermaltake Big Water 850I cooling kit. The PC is attached to a 24v rechargeable  electric scooter. This has to be up there with the coolest rides a geek could ever own.

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Nowadays eco-friendly is definitely the way to go, and green is a hip color, so the Sol Cinema follows the latest trends.

It was created by artist Peter O’Connor with the help of some of his colleagues from the British art collective Undercurrents, in a travel trailer from the 1960’s. The Sol Cinema is fully powered by the sun, using 120W solar panels that are connected to four large lithium-ion batteries, providing sufficient energy for the LED projector and all the other electronics inside .

But being powered by solar energy alone isn’t the only unique characteristic of the Sol Cinema, as being set up inside a trailer also makes it the world’s smallest solar theater. Believe it or not, it’s able to accommodate up to eight visitors.

The cinema focuses it’s screenings on eco-themed movies or documentaries. If you’re interested, more info on the theater’s tour dates and locations can be found on the official website. Apparently, following its local success, the Sol Cinema is preparing for a tour around Europe.

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They weren’t born to serve you but they were definitely built to do just that, and where else if not in China.

Located in Jiang, China’s Shandong Province, the Dalu Rebot Restaurant opened on the 5th of December and can cater to about 100 customers, featuring two robot receptionists and a “staff” of six robot-waitresses. Two of them serve drinks, two serve small tables and another two tend to the big one. It seems that more “hiring” will be made in the near future as owners expect the restaurant will become quite a hit.

As all the waiting is done by robots, the tables were set in a circular pattern so that the robots can follow an exact route. Not all the work in the restaurant is done by them though, there are also people working there, especially in the kitchen, but some were also hired to welcome customers into the restaurant.

The concept belongs to The Shandong Dalu Science and Technology Company, who isn’t planning to stop here, as they want to further develop this idea and ultimately have a staff of 40 robots. Seems logical enough, considering that business really took off when the people heard about these unusual waiters.

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Children’s furnishing company Posh Tots is trying to fulfill every Star Wars fan’s fantasy of owning their very own Deep Space Fighter, by creating series of beds inspired by the iconic spacecraft.

That’s right Star Wars fanboys, after the incredibly awesome Millennium Falcon bed and Imperial Walker bunk bed, it’s time for another mind-blowing sleeping contraption. The Deep Space Fighter Bed looks like it’s been modeled after the Eta-2 interceptor that Anakin Skywalker piloted at the end of “Revenge of the Sith”, but the company allows its clients to make whatever custom modifications they desire, and they even throw in a free supporting wall mural that can depict anything from an army of elite fighters to a squadron of space fighters.

That sounds awesome, but that’s only because you don’t yet know the price. The Deep Space Fighter Bed starts at $18,000 dollars. Now I know it’s important to fulfill your child’s dreams, but for that much cash you could probably buy him a real ship.

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