Chances are slim you'll be able to, but see if you can guess what this is:
That's a patent-pending design called the MSA Bypass Shuttle, designed by Nadeem Haidary, that would allow construction workers rigged to safety cables to pass each other. Construction workers high up on beams will often need to string a lifeline between two I-beams and clip themselves to it, but despite this precaution, falls are still the leading cause of death in that industry; a building being erected right next to Core77's offices had just such an accident a few years ago.
Presumably the fact that workers rigged to the lifelines cannot pass each other leads some to avoid clipping into the lines altogether, as the importance of mobility and deadlines is given precedence over safety. Haidary's design uses clever geometry to enable one worker passing another to flip his shuttle 180 degrees, allowing it to pass "through" the other worker's shuttle without detaching from the line.
The project was named for and done in conjunction with a manufacturer called Mine Safety Appliances, and though Haidary often says "We" in his project description, he does not specifically mention whether he worked as part of a design team or designed the device on his own.
Writes Haidary of his general design philosophy,
I think of design as applied experimentation. To prototype ideas, build things, visit a foreign land, to be curious about everything is to set yourself up for the possibility of discovering new solutions to the world's problems. In fact, I want to be what Buckminster Fuller called a 'comprehensivist'.
Check out the rest of Naidary's stuff here.