I'm a fairly new Heck Head (just made that up... not sure if that should catch on or not), so if this has already been covered on a previous project, forgive me. I also haven't found a comprehensive list of past projects he's done. I know he's also into filming (or at least was at one point in his life) so I don't know what equipment he has and how applicable this is to him personally. Anywhose, on to the suggestion:
Some form of high and/or low tech gimbal and/or steadicam.
I just recently had the idea of doing a version of Pharrell's Happy, but with just my family and we would film anywhere we go (vacation, visiting relatives, etc.). So in 16 years when my son turns 18, he'll have 16 years of Happiness. For anyone who's seen the official video (which is a compilation of 24hoursofhappy.com), each shot is going to require ~4 min of the camera-person slowly walking backwards. This of course led me to seek out steadicams. But, I'm a cheapskate by nature, then throw on top of that the fact that I just don't make enough money for that many hobbies.
In my search for something a little more substantial than Johnny Chung Lee's $14 steadicam, I cam across a few DIY steadicams consisting of bent aluminum or screw-together brackets with washers for weights and R/C U-Joints for the handle (which is probably what I'm going to settle with... unless I can get some other ideas like a ball joint (but they have to be incredibly snug/tight)). But, I also cam across motored gimbals, which was new to me but I'm sure they've been around forever (obviously in the profession arena, I don't know how long they've been around in the average consumer area). And, given the dropping cost of things like motors, sensors, circuitry, etc. I think it might be time for the average Joe (or average Ben in this case) to take a stab at it. Here's an example of what one guy did modding an existing consumer product.
Some things to think about:
Roll, pitch, and yaw. In the example video, it's just roll and pitch; how much more difficult/expensive would it be to add yaw?
If you decide to add yaw, should it just have manual yaw movement or should it compensate for it? If so, should you add some functionality of choosing a focal point; if so, how would you indicate that to the user (e.g. just have settings at 5 foot increments, or have an actual screen with an overlay)?
Should this include any sort of horizontal or vertical stabilization that's usually achieved with parts from an M56 Smart Gun... or maybe just one of these?