Weird human-powered elevator is the way of the future

The future of vertical travel is here and boy does it look weird.

Faced with a future of high-rise buildings and attempts to curb power use, the team at Rombout Frieling Lab put together a Rombout Frieling Lab which we scientifically describe as human-powered elevator thing.

Called Vertical Walking, this prototype is being pitched as a low-energy alternative to stairs or elevators and is on display at Dutch Design Week until tomorrow.

It looks like a decent ab workout, but it’s supposed to be very low impact.

Tested for those with limited mobility, it was given the tick of approval by a person with multiple sclerosis and an amputee.

Apparently it requires less than 10 per cent of the energy used to walk up a flight of stairs, but at what cost?

Dignity?

The ability to scroll through Instagram while moving between floors?

It seems like a hard pitch to sell to millennials who constantly have a phone in their hands but according to Rombout, it’s a hit with the kids.

“Young office tower workers ... found it ‘incredibly cool’,” we’re told.

Riiiiight.

Maybe the norms of office life are too deeply ingrained in us, but as far as we can tell this is going to take a long time before we’re using the Vertical Walking contraption to get to our top-floor meeting.

But we will say this – the machine could have could have made Die Hard a heck of a lot easier on Bruce Willis.