The Mini Sixteen-Wheeler is a homemade vehicle with 16 wheels arranged radially around a body resembling two overlapping octagons. Power reaches all 16 wheels, but on a flat floor it travels straight using only the four wheels touching the ground. When sent toward a wall, it spins in place. Attempts to negotiate slopes and steps did not go as planned.
Its creator, Zeru, developed the idea as a byproduct of working on a physics simulation model. The body was 3D-printed, then assembled with gears and wheels.
All sixteen wheels are powered, but only four do the driving on a normal floor. Just when you wonder what the other twelve are for, the machine starts spinning by a wall.
The Tragic Mouse is an iPhone case that also works as a functional computer mouse.
It was created by Matty Benedetto of Unnecessary Inventions, a maker who builds deliberately unnecessary products. The creator's official page lists the device as operational.
Your phone already does so much, but apparently its case also needed to become a computer mouse. Now your phone has another job on the desk.
An exhibit at NT Tokyo 2026 featured a 'half-human pen plotter,' a drawing machine that deliberately leaves part of the work to a person.
The small XY stage moves the paper while a human presses a pen down and lifts it up. The drawing itself is difficult to see while working, but the user can feel the paper moving through the pen and hear the mechanism.
The creator is Naan. See the 'Naanさん「半人力ペンプロッタ」' section of the linked firsthand event report.
A machine meant to automate drawing still needs a human assigned to raise and lower the pen. The person has effectively become a printer component.
All sixteen wheels are powered, but only four do the driving on a normal floor. Just when you wonder what the other twelve are for, the machine starts spinning by a wall.