Smart work boots detect falls, pinpoint locations and are powered by footsteps
SolePower’s self-sustaining smart work boots can be embedded with electronics including GPS, motion sensors, WIFI, RFID and lights. All are charged by the power of footsteps. SolePower, a Pittsburgh based start up capturing energy from footsteps, is working to reduce accidents and mitigate risk on the construction site with its wearable technology that can detect falls and pinpoint workers’ locations in emergency sitations.
SmartBoots will be one of the first wearables in a growing trend of connected devices designed for the Industrial internet of things (IIoT). “We embedded our kinetic charger into a work boot and it generated power to run GPS and sensors that detect motion, movement and temperature. As workers move, the system gathers data,” says Hahna Alexander, co-founder and CEO of SolePower.
A tracker that alerts workers when they enter a dangerous area or a panic button to notify a supervisor the location of an accident could save lives and mitigate risk.
3D printing the buildings of the future
FreeFAB™ Wax is a construction scale 3D printing technology that allows complex concrete building components and prototypes to be designed and developed more cost effectively and with shorter lead times than current alternatives. The technology combines both 3D printing and five-axis surface milling to deliver a hybrid technology for the fabrication of precision moulds for the construction and other industries.
FreeFAB is the first 3D-printing technology being used in a big commercial building project, the Crossrail, which is currently Europe’s biggest construction project (digging a new east-west railway line across London). Show offices and show homes have been printed in places such as Dubai and China, but are, for now, just concepts. The problem is that printed concrete is currently produced in layers, which are fused together to make a thicker panel. However, the boundaries between the layers introduce weaknesses that make the panels unsuitable for real buildings because the layers can peel apart.
FreeFAB gets around this by printing moulds instead of printing structural material directly. While in its infancy, FreeFab technology, and others like it, will mature and could revolutionize how buildings are created.
Yes, of course there is an app for that!
Present. Collaborate. Critique. Awarded as “Best App” by ArchDaily, Morpholio makes it possible for architects and designers to beautifully present, creatively share and instantly discuss their work in one seamless platform. MorpholioTrace, in particular, is the designers’ and architects’ dream software. This app functions like a tracing paper, allowing users to draw on imported images and add comments and pointers on separate layers.
Tools include the ScalePen, which is a patent-pending technology that checks the drawing scale and zoom level continuously to automatically assign a calibrated set of technical pens; a patent-pending stencil, which automatically turns any image you can find, make or take into a custom template in seconds; instant scale that allows users to use any two points to set a scale in imperial or metric units; and the ability to make drawing sets to send and/or print from anywhere.
It works on iPad Pro and requires Apple Pencil for sketching.
www.morpholioapps.com