4moms has announced its forthcoming Origami stroller, a $850 baby transportation unit that uses wheel-mounted dynamos to charge batteries that power an electronic chair-folding/unfolding system, as well as a pedometer, running lights, a kid-in-seat sensor, and other instrumentations. I've never understood the hostility towards strollers ("Make your kid walk! Carry your kid! Carry your kid and all the associated junk and your shopping! Forever!"), and it's certainly true that folding and unfolding strollers can be hard, especially when your arms are busy, and yeah, that is a really cool little actuator-and-solenoid transformation to watch. But leaving aside the affordability question ($850 is a lot of dough!), there's the fact that a $850 stroller is a serious potential liability: would you feel safe checking this on an airline or leaving it in a train's luggage area? How about parking it at the playground and walking away from it for a play-session?
