To use it you basically straddle a bicycle seat with robotic legs, tie it to your shoes, and then (gingerly) go about your business, uncomfortably demonstrated in a video after the break.

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Growing up in the early 1970s I spent my August summer evenings tooling around on my banana seat bicycle and playing outside games such as hide and seek.

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Inspired by the traffic that hummed through the intersection outside their Zurich flat, the Freitag brothers designed a courier bag made of old truck tarpaulins, used bicycle inner tubes and car seat belts.

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Islanders in flip-flops, the ladies in floral dresses, clatter past on their rickety steeds, while shouting schoolkids whizz along three or four to a bicycle, with extra riders perched on the seat-stays and handle-bars.

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