PACE's global Portable Assisted Mobility Device project gets underway
Thu, 11 Apr 2013
The Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering Education (PACE) has challenged selected global college teams to design a Portable Assisted Mobility Device (PAMD) that will help solve mobility and sustainability problems within megacities in 2030.
Each team of selected global colleges will consist of one Industrial Design Institution and several Engineering and Manufacturing Institutions, with students working alongside their professors and industry mentors to help develop their designs for a small power-assisted vehicle that can be taken on public transport, stowed or carried indoors.
The PAMD concepts are designed to carry one passenger and their personal items such as a briefcase or backpack. The PAMD must address the transportation issues as the population grows within a target market that the teams specify. Their designs must also be theoretically available for mass-production within two to three years.
Over the first year Industrial Design students will propose a number of concept proposals before settling on a single design with input from the engineering and manufacturing school. The final design will be developed into a full-scale model by those schools, who will also design support equipment and business plans. This single design will be presented at the annual PACE Forum before the teams spend the second year developing a fully working prototype.
In its entirety the project will take two years to complete, with all three sets of schools taking an equal part in the creation of the final prototype. The Engineering and Manufacturing schools will take the helm for the second year while the Industrial Design schools will have constant input.
The participants in the PACE PAMD Project are:
Team 1 Lead school and Industrial Design school – Hongik UniversityInha University
Northwestern University
Tuskegee University Team 2 Lead school – University of Sao Paolo
Industrial Design school – Art Center College of Design
Instituto Politecnico Nacional (IPN)
Jilin University
New Mexico State University (NMSU) Team 3 Lead school – People's Education Society Institute of Technology (PESIT)
Industrial Design school – National Institute of Design
Sri Jayachamarajendra College of Engineering (SJCE)
Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU)
University of Toronto Team 4 Lead school – ITESM Toluca
Industrial Design school – ITSEM Monterrey
McMaster University
University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT)
ITSEM Monterrey (Engineering) Team 5 Lead school – RWTH Aachen University
Industrial Design school – University of Cincinnati
Michigan Technological University
University of Cincinnati (Engineering)
Technische Universitaet-Darmstadt Team 6 Lead school – University of Puerto Rico
Industrial Design school – Monash University & College of Creative Studies
Universidad Iberoamericana ( UIA)
Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU)
Korea University Team 7
Lead school – Politecnico di Torina
Industrial Design school – Tongji University
Instituto Autonomo de Mexico (ITAM)
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
Tongji University (Engineering)
The final projects will be presented to the attendees of the PACE Annual Forum, held in July in Pasadena, California. For more information, visit the official website.
We'll be following the teams' progress all the way, so look out for our up-to-date coverage.
By Rufus Thompson