Week 3: Exciting / Interesting Findings

One of the most surprising things that we found while doing market research was a more specific demographic for our original problem statement. When we first began on this project, we were expecting to find that our problem statement and tentative solution would be applicable to nearly anyone who carried a portable electronic device. However, as we quickly learned, simply harnessing the kinetic energy from walking wasn't enough. Instead, we found that a more plausible target demographic were concert- or festival-goers, who indicated that it was difficult to find a power source at concerts or festivals. We found that, not surprisingly, people tend to move a lot more during these events; and the amount of kinetic energy that could be harvested from their movements was much greater than that of walking. In the end, not having power at a concert proved to be a bigger problem than we foresaw.

Week 3: What's Next

Up to this point, our team has been working towards defining a problem statement by conducting a market research analysis and analyzing the competition.  Now, we are finally able to focus on designing a product that solves our defined problem. Our problem statement emphasizes that music festival-goers often find their mobile devices running out of charge and lack ease of access to a power source. We plan to create a product that solves this problem using renewable energy. Specifically, we want to harness the kinetic energy from dancing and raging to charge a small battery that can be used to charge these devices. The next step in doing this will be to do some calculations and determine how much energy we can actually capture based on how big the device will be. Some reverse engineering will be necessary to determine how this harnessing is done in larger scale devices like ‘shake to charge’ magnet flashlights.

Week 3 – Challenges

Now that we have a clearly defined problem and understand the needs of our target customer, it is time to come up with a solution that meets those needs.  The first challenge is determining if there is a feasible way to deliver enough power to a place where there is a limited number of electrical outlets. However, we believe there are enough energy sources other than electrical ones and there are enough ways to transport electrical energy that a solution does exist. With the help of faculty at the university we will hopefully be able to find that solution. Additionally, we need further information on what exactly our target customer expects from our product. This can be done with more surveys that ask more direct questions about design.

Week 3 - Project Status

We're finally done with gate review 1! It was a lot of work because we ended up redefining our problem statement at the last minute, and were missing two teammates during the time that we did the bulk of the work. But in the end, I'm satisfied with the way that the report and presentation turned out. 

We have now defined our problem as the need for people to charge their mobile devices at music festivals without having to plug into an outlet. We are thinking to solve this with an energy generation device that captures motion. This idea was refined from targeting people who walk in general, because there is a lot more motion associated with dancing at music festivals, and because there is a demonstrated need for a charging solution in this setting. 

From our QFD, we found that this device needs to be roughly the size of an iPhone (or smaller), should cost between $30 and $50 and should output a full battery charge from one day of energy collection. We're excited to move into the design phase next week, and figure out how exactly we intend to do this. We have been throwing around the idea of a simple electro-magnetic generator in a creative shape, and may still consider using elastomeric capacitors in some way (though that will be very technically difficult. 

Throughout writing the report, we were always very eager to come up with ideas for designs. Not that the gate review is done, we are more than ready to seriously tackle the problem of design!

Week 2 - Exciting Findings

This week, we have completed and distributed a survey to investigate the market for our product. From speaking to a few potential customers, it sounds like there could be a real need for a portable battery-charging device, especially among students! We were fairly sure that we would find this to be the case, but we have been hoping to find that our market research agrees with our hypothesis. If there is a large number of people who are interested in portable battery charging, it means that we are more likely to be successful in our project!
We have also been thinking about various methods that we could facilitate charging, just to be sure that the problem we decide to tackle is viable. The biggest danger in choosing to make a portable charging device is that we may not be able to create something that functions using our limited resources. We have come up with some exciting and promising ideas, however, and are choosing to move forward in the direction of energy solutions.

Week 2 Our Project Status

Since last week, we have created, distributed and begun to compile data from a survey to help define our market and potential users. We have also begun to define our market and believe that it will involve frequent users of mobile devices, such as e-readers, tablets, smart phones, or mp3 players, between the age of 13-60, who regular have an active schedule and day.

We have also met with a specialist who has experience in the field of renewable energy and smart materials. This gave us great insight as to what potential ways have been and are being sued to solve current energy needs. One example we learned about was the use of memory shape alloys that are able to convert the compression of one's shoe and generate power from it over time.

We have also begun to research the potential competition that exists in the field of portable energy solutions. We have found that many companies have designed products that allow you to charge a battery that can be taken with you to later use to charge virtually any device that uses a sub to charge it. We also found that some products have been made to convert the kinetic energy fro ma bike into enough power to charge one's phone.  However, in general there does not seam to be a product that allows a typical user to walk around and charge their device without having previously charged another device or used solar panels..

We are now currently preparing for our first GR presentation and are continuing to develop a problem statement. We are also researching what possible patents exist in the field of portable energy.

Week 2- What's Next

What’s next

Our next steps include distributing the survey and compiling the results. This will then allow us the learn information necessary for the gate review. It will also allow us to determine where the biggest opening in the market it and where we can find out niche. Once this is complete we can determine, in more detail, who our competition is and who our target persona is. Then an accurate and complete QFD can be made. In the following week we will be able to start our brainstorming to determine how we are going to solve the problem at hand.

Week 2 - Challenges

Challenges that our team is facing this coming week consist of organizing and analyzing our survey results, finalizing our problem statement, and then deciding the avenue we want to take amongst the options we have for solving that problem. Analyzing and extracting useful information out of the surveys will be a challenge because we need to determine from that data where an exploitable product niche lies in the market for charging mobile devices. We have a pair of options for charging products at this point; a device that trickle charges a battery from the kinetic energy of walking, or a small rechargeable device that would be rented from a ‘RedBox’ style machine to quickly recharge a phone on the go. Depending on the results we see from the survey, we will have to conduct QFD and see which option is the smallest risk and makes the most sense to develop further.

Week 1 - Project Status

This week we finalized our group roster to five people, who all happen to be ME undergrads. We all wanted to pick a project pertaining to energy, particularly renewable energy. With so many electronic devices being a part of our normal everyday lives in today’s day and age, we have noticed a problem with always having to charge these devices. The battery capacity in many modern smartphones and laptops is becoming quite substantial, but over the course of the average college student’s work week it seems like the energy is depleted rapidly on a near daily basis.

Our team would like to develop a product that solves this problem of drained batteries in an “off the grid” manner, so that the consumer never needs to worry about running out of juice when he/she is on the go. The device would remain in the consumer’s handbag or backpack and have the ability to harness kinetic, renewable energy through the motion of walking to trickle charge a high-capacity battery. The whole idea is not to replace a conventional AC wall outlet, but to offer a power boost in times of dire need and be capable of high wattage output. Hand crank devices have been on the market for years but are usually only capable of producing on the order of 5-10 watts, which will not charge a laptop. Many Apple chargers output 60 watts to charge their line of smaller MacBook Pros.

Before taking the plunge into trying to create a new niche charging product, the team needs to conduct a full patent search to be sure a similar idea is not protected already. After some preliminary online searches, no such product has been on the market for sale that can harness enough kinetic energy from walking to charge laptops. Most of these commercial devices can’t generate electricity without first being charged themselves from AC power. More preliminary research is essential before we try to start engineering a product, as is a consumer survey to see if this truly is a problem for consumers.

Exciting/Interesting Finding

The most interesting part of our project so far has been speaking with Dr. Luntz. Since the problem we are trying to solve involves harvesting energy portably, we discussed the different ways in which this could be done, including the use of smart materials. One such smart material system that was particular interesting to learn about was the dielectric elastomer. These elastomers have the ability to convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. This is done by first connecting electrodes to both sides of a thin and highly elastic material to create an elastic capacitor. A force that deforms the material will cause the voltage across the capacitor to change. This change in voltage can be used to harvest electrical energy. This technology is very exciting because it has never been used before in commercial applications.

Week 1 - What's Next

What's Next
So far, we have identified a sector with markets that we would like explore, and are planning to create a survey to gather opinions. This survey will help us identify what needs could be filled by a new product and will guide our product selection process. We plan to evaluate several technologies with varying physical characteristics and select the one that appears to fit closely with what our market wants, is economically feasible and is something that is reasonable for us to complete in a semester. After speaking to Dr. Luntz about smart materials, we are excited to begin the selection process and explore how we can make the technologies he presented to us into useable and manufactureable products!

Week 1

Challenges:
Our team’s major challenge right now is determining which method to use to harvest energy. While many options exist, including shape memory alloys, piezoelectric, dielectric elastomer, or electromagnetic generators, we are unsure of their energy potentials and whether or not it will be feasible to generate enough energy to power a consumer’s product, such as a phone. While research has shown that these materials have the ability to generate energy from a given mechanical source or input, the amount of energy we require may be too great. Additionally, given that they were used to generate small amounts of energy, we are not sure how these options would scale to an application that meets a consumer’s needs. Furthermore, we are concerned that the manufacturing or application of any of these options at our scale may prove to be very difficult given our team’s background in mechanical engineering and not electrical engineering.