Personal flying machine and parking house up for James Dyson Award

The Dyson Award is open to product and industrial design and engineering students or recent graduates, who are tasked to ‘design something that solves a problem’.

The overall international winner will receive £10 000, plus £10 000 for their university, while two runners up will receive £2000 and national winners will receive £1000.

Among this year’s entrants are Jet Shao, from New Zealand, who has come up with the Sky Voyage personal air transportation concept, which is designed for commuters.

A gas canister provides natural buoyancy for the vehicle, and the commuter can then steer it using a gliding wing.

US student Zhibin Cheng has developed the Parking + Housing design. The concept is based around an inflatable ETFE skin structure, which means the house can be made larger at night, and compressed in the daytime when the occupants are away, to allow for parking space.

Andrew Peoples, from the UK, has created the Medi Chair mobile hospital chair design. The Medi Chair aims to cut hospital infection through a self-cleaning mechanism – the chair features integrated antibacterial nanoparticles within the plastics and paint coatings.

The deadline for entries to the 2012 James Dyson Award is 2 August, for more information and to enter visit www.jamesdysonaward.org.

The national winners will be announced on 30 August and the overall winner will be announced on 8 November.

The 2011 James Dyson Award was won by Australian industrial design student Edward Linacre for his crop irrigation system.