Birmingham City University

​There's no shortage of design students turning out crappy furniture, but Sanelisiwe Mafa is making furniture from crap. And we're not talking repurposing old junk here, the Product Design Student from Birmingham City University has literally used crap as a material – cow manure to be precise.

Over 810,000 office chairs are disposed of annually in the UK alone. Concerned by that waste, product design student Thomas Howell-Jones came up with a way to help keep them out of the landfill – he's using their back rests to make hard-shell backpacks.​

​​Pretty much all of us have them – the forgotten clothes that we never wear. They really should be sent to charity, if only we could remember to do so. That's why a group at Birmingham City University has created what it calls the "Internet of Clothes."

We've already seen experimental "white canes" that allow blind users to get a sense of their surroundings via ultrasound and lasers. The XploR mobility cane, however, uses its onboard electronics towards another end – to help users locate people that they know.

Birmingham City University and Westfield Sportscars team up to develop an electric race car kit.

The MotivePro "vibrating suit" provides real time feedback to the wearer about where their body is in space to help improve physical technique.