Lunavity is a Japanese startup with a creation that is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and somewhat future leaning. Their device is a backpack-worn rotor that allows the user to experience reduced gravity, or machine-assisted jumping. It’s both absurd and fascinating, something seemingly made more as a conversation piece than a practical item. However, it is intriguing to consider the ability to jump higher than you ever have, and soar slowly through the air. Harnessing the technology of drones and user-feedback, the device allows for jump augmentation. Created by students of the University of Tokyo, we’re impressed by the wacky vision of Lunavity, and are interested to see if it ever reaches the market.
Lunavity was a student project from the University of Tokyo that debuted at SXSW in 2018, and as far as we can tell it never went beyond the prototype and the very cheerful concept video. That is fine. It belongs to a long tradition of Japanese speculative design that takes a silly question seriously, in this case how it would feel to jump like you were on the moon. The real jetpacks and flying machines have since caught up, so see the Volonaut Airbike, the Jetson One personal aircraft, and Hypershell’s hiking exoskeleton, the closest thing yet to strapping on extra legs.
