During the Fall 2020 semester, we were tasked with coming up with a product to “help improve the social distancing experience, so that people don’t just get by, but thrive”.
Over three and a half months, my team conducted interviews and fieldwork to gain an understanding of the problems people are facing during COVID, and eventually decided to target students and working professionals. From over 100 brainstormed ideas, we decided to produce an integrated backpack/chair/desk with the intent of promoting productivity while allowing users to enjoy the outdoors and experience a change in environment. After four major prototypes (mockups, CAD, and physical), our final design integrated all of our targeted features while still remaining sturdy, easy to use, and manufacturable.
More information is provided in the linked report below the pictures, including financial, market, legal, and environmental analyses.
Media
Renders of the backpack in the stowed configuration
Render of the deployed configuration
If autoplay is not supported in your browser, click on the above video to play
Report
Additional Product
I also completed an additional product which served as a cross-over between my research in the Organic Robotics Lab and this class - seeking to answer the question of “can we use additive manufacturing of soft lattices with embedded sensing in a consumer product”?
So, to stay aligned with the market my team identified for the backpack, I decided to use this technology in a high-end smart seat cushion, which is able to sense how the user is seated and alert them if they are in a non-ergonomic position. When pressure is applied to the lattice cushion, it deforms and causes the light guides (soft optical fibers) to press against eachother, causing a redistribution in the light passed through these guides. This distribution changes based on the location and amount of pressure, to accurately detect the seating position. Alerts are provided through vibration motors connected to the front of the cushion.
CAD renders of the final lattices (seat cushion and back support) with the light guides routed through the structure
FEA model (shown: displacement) for the lattice, along with an explanation of how the field approximating the seating pressure distribution was generated
Animation of setting up and stowing the chair and desk within the backpack. (If autoplay is not supported in your browser, click on the above video to play)