Core77

Seeking help from Core77 readers: An idea in need of sketches/renderings

By Rain Noe - November 3, 2010

in Object Culture

I suck at presentation drawings. And as evidenced by my banquette-building post, my ideational sketches are useful to me but chicken-scratch to others. So, to all Core77 readers who are ill with Illustrator, fleet of Photoshop or magic with markers, I need your help. I just had an idea that's begging for some cool renderings to go along with it: An airbag for a cell phone. We've all dropped our phones, phones now have accelerometers, and airbag technology is nothing new. Why not put them all together? At least two things to consider: 1) Presumably the airbag should be more like a pillow and less like a basketball, so it doesn't bounce all over the place after you drop it, and 2) What happens to the airbag after it's deployed? Is it recycleable? Re-usable? Another idea I had, that seems a bit more far-fetched, is for a cell phone with a wraparound bumper that, if dropped, breaks out into stiff, rubbery tentacles. In other words the phone would suddenly look like a blowfish, and no matter which way it landed it would be protected. So, please get cracking if you've got the time, inclination and skills. What do you get in return? Well, I'll throw up another entry showing the best-of-the-best sketches (or let's be honest, all of the ones that don't just flat-out suck), with credit. And when some company finally makes a cell phone airbag in five years' time, you can point back to the entry and say "Yeah, me and Hipstomp thought of this wayyyy before them." Please send drawings to rain (at) core 77 [dot] com, subject: "Phonebag." Thanks!

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utilisateur

14 years ago

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Wouldnt d3o be the opposite of what is wanted , hardening up instead of softening+slowing the shock on the electronic parts/case
A Memory effect with soft tentacles would be interesting in my eyes , they could be soft and erect when an impact is sensed.

A sensor that detects objects approaching quicker than a preset value would be the ideal trigger i guess ?!
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Hypernaut

14 years ago

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actually there is already something similar to what you want to achieve with your tentacles. d3o - this orange soft rubber like material is already used for all kinds of shock protection mostly in cloth. The material hardens on impact and absorbs the shock energy and afterwards get back to it's original state. (There are some crazy videos on youtube with guys using baseball bats or frying pans hammering down with full force on somebody with such protections)
http://www.d3o.com/
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Aaron

14 years ago

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Why not make this into the next 1HDC? (or maybe a bit longer as you want presso deliverable renders!)
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Tom

14 years ago

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When designing a cell phone, I wouldn't want to sacrifice precious space for a folded airbag. It would have to be an optional add-on, like a rubber case.
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Dave

14 years ago

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@Timesath

GPS could be useful for this. e.g. the user could be walking through the streets of New York City so its pretty safe to assume that if he/she drops the phone that it will end up hitting a solid surface.
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Timesath

14 years ago

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Car air bags activate after a collision and do not spare any damage to the car. A phone air bag would need the ability to know that being tossed or dropped would actually hurt. How would the phone know that it was going to hit concrete and not a bed?
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