Atena the kinetic battery
Project goals
The goal of this project was to identify a problem area through research/evaluation and generate insights to seed the design and development process. This included generative and evaluative research, concept sketching/ideation, form refinement and prototyping.
This was a solo project that spanned 14 weeks. I was under the guidance of Simon Williamson.
Research
The National Electric grid needs an overhaul. Much of its infrastructure has remained the same since the early 70's while the demand for electricity has nearly tripled since then. August 2003, a crucial connection, linking the northeast with eastern Canada failed, causing one of the largest power outages in the northern Hemisphere that decade. It took nearly 4 week for the power to be fully restored.
While living in Boston in 2012, a transformer failed and caught fire. I quickly took this opportunity to gather as much research as I could.
With only a few outages a year, I had to recreate the experience manually. I would sneak over to the circuit breakers at my friends houses and flip the master switch to witness how they reacted during an outage. Everyone would scramble trying to find a light source. Whether it be a flashlight app on their phone or a candle, everyone would panic.
I surveyed 56 people to understand how long the outages that they experienced lasted and how frequent they were. I learned that I needed to design for an outage that could last a few hours to a couple of days.
Before I started designing, I wanted to see what was out on the market that solved some of the initial needs. I quickly learned that many commercial solutions were loud, wasteful and not scaleable.
After witnessing what people did during an outage, their immediate need for light and the current solution in the market today I knew what I needed to design for. Aside from the fundamentals like being easy to operate, silent, easy to instal and safe, I needed to design around something that is rechargeable, recyclable, power emitting and light emitting.
Power storage is the heart of the functionality. I looked into different technologies that could store power. The flywheel proved to be the most efficient, silent and cost effective solution. As a proof of concept, I converted an old electromagnetic turntable into a flywheel by bypassing a few governor chips which allowed the plate to rotate around 80 PRMs. At this speed when the device was no longer receiving power it could produce enough electricity to power three LEDs for about 2 minutes.
Looking back into history I learned that the obelisk was used as a central meeting point and that the ancient Egyptians looked to Aten, their sun god in times of crisis. The obelisk being the main point of inspiration, I wanted to focus on simple geometry as I started sketching. This aligned nicely with the requirements of the flywheel because the flywheel needs to be cylindrical in form.
Ideation
I wanted to highlight the flywheel because of it's power and simplicity. Being inspired by the obelisk, I wanted the light to come from the top and refract off the wall. Building the unit to live in the corner of a room was logical because it would provide two wall surfaces for the light to refract off of.
Paper sketching could only take me so far. I needed to understand how the light would reflect off the wall and the unit. I build many 3d models in Rhino and rendered them in Keyshot to understand how all the elements would work together. Digital sketching also allowed me to focus on the details and the subtle nuances like the hardware that would really unify the design.
I build various scale models to understand what the best scale would be as I refined the form. Before I started working the final prototype I made a foamcore mockup and wired it with LEDs to validate my direction.
Concept
While I finalized the form, I focused on the color, material and finish. Simplicity was key and I did not want to overpower the aesthetics so I used matte and gloss black, aluminum and orange highlights. I used my final CAD models to help me build a prototype for our senior show.
I build a 1:1 scale model and wired it to mimic the experience of the function system. For the model I used poplar wood, Renshape, styrene and acrylic.
Some of the details include:
- magnetic attachments for USB and power output to help prevent tipping the unit
- orange detail highlighting power intake and output
- hand crank for manual restoration
- LED indicator showing remaining power
- low profile outlet plugs
- storage container for the extension cord
- customization buttons for light intensity and charging
Once the system is powered on, it will self level. The system is optimized to run with an 80 pound modular flywheel. To add the modular flywheel weights the user has to open the main compartment and individually add each 10 pound weight by sliding them down the central axle. Once complete, the user can turn on the automatic flywheel storage, or manually charge the system with the provided hand crank.