From Human Power to Consumer Power
Portable devices represent convenience, however their batteries are seen as being a nuisance. This is not only from an environmental point of view but particularly from a user perspective (you always run out of power at the wrong moment) as well as a cost perspective (batteries are relatively expensive). Human powered products could offer an alternative for these inconveniences. Literature however offers little guidance about where human power can be applied with success. Therefore, at Industrial Design Engineering in Delft, such products have been studied intensively. In the course of several years, some 20 graduation projects have been carried out on the subject. One PhD dissertation summarizing it all, and putting it into a broader ergonomic and physical framework, is still underway (see chapter 4.6). There are a lot of physical principles to choose from however to generate the power, both by active movements (finger, thumb, hand, arm, foot, leg) or passive ones (chest, heat emission, airflow). In physical language there rotation, translation and are all available. In fact there is an embarrassing amount of choices. Several projects had difficulties in matching the energy generation principle and the functionality required. Not for student Eelco S however. His approach for designing a human powered remote control was a very pragmatic one. In the spirit of Delfts engineering tradition -take big steps and try to get home quickly -he established 13 principles for generating energy. The principles ranged from ‘wind-up’ to ‘break-up’ and he explained the principles to users and asked them what they would like most. The selection of the six preferred principles included the wind-up, the pull, the roller, the push button, the trackball and “shake-it. A further selection was made by applying other design criteria like reliability and price. At the end of this exercise only three concepts survived: the wind-up, the roller and the “shake-it. The next step was to build real prototypes and have them tested by users. Eelco observed each meticulously and drew the following conclusions. Shake-it drops out. Roller seems best but has some problems with usability. The end result was the design of a TV remote control that was powered through a combination of the wind-up and roller principles. The lessons learned for the designer from this project was do not be arrogant and do not think that you know better than anyone else. For the engineer the lessons were let practice show the way and do not try to calculate everything upfront. For the design engineer it was let the users feel, touch and speak.
国际会议
The 4th International Conference on Waste Management and Technology(第四届固体废物管理与技术国际会议)
北京
英文
159
2009-11-28（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）