Prototyping Advanced Technology Projects -Part 1
December 31st of 2019 I was in Bali writing my new year's resolution on Year Compass a 3-hour exercise where you reflect on your past year and the coming year. 2020 was an exciting year to come excited with all the new projects, conferences, retreats waiting to welcome the all the excitement universe had to offer.With the excitement went to Abudhabi to take part in the World Urbun Forum from UNHabbitat for fund raise for our UrbunX accelerator in Nirobi Kenya. On my way back I had to change plans to move to SriLanka my hometown instead of Beijing my second home and I was stuck in paradise.Prototyping Advanced Technology Projects is an article series around a framework for developing Advanced Technology Projects enjoy part 1 of the series ( Nothing else to do than writing in a quarantined hotel in Shanghai ) I will be using BreathTech- S³ as a case study.
Moonshot thinking framework
In 1962 Moonshot thinking was emerged with, President John F. Kennedy gave a speech at Rice University where he delivered these words: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade” He Inspired a generation of engineers designers and Scientists to join hands to complete an incredible challenging task.
As a young scientist myself I was inspired by many people who crossed my path to invent technologies helping the world finding problems worth solving.
Moonshot Thinking is when you decide to tackle a huge problem, such as climate change, and address with a radical solution to the problem using disruptive technology. Inoder to make moonshot thinking viable we need to give up the 10% incremental development process and change our mindset to come up with radical approaches to solve the problem with 10X improvements for traditional systems.
In SriLanka, we are a land of rich minerals especially when it comes to Graphite we have the best Vein Graphite in the world which leads to graphene which has many applications in designing bio sensors .At CirQ technologies we work on developing novel graphene sensors for multiple industry verticles I started working with an incredible set of Scientists at the Sri Lanka Institute of Nano Technology to find a solution to redefine our relationship with face masks which was the only form of protection against Covid-19 pandemic.
USD 166 Billion was estimated to be spent on disposable masks in 2020. Up from USD 800 million in 2019. Approximately 75 % of used masks and other pandemic-related waste will end up in landfills, or floating in the seas.
Aside from the environmental damage, the financial cost in areas such as tourism and fisheries is estimated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) at around USD 40 Billion
We wanted to create a facemask that is 100% biodegradable and smart , when it comes tdesigning smart masks this was not our first try we have delivered 2 smart masks previously which were revolutionary in the air wearable market . Atmoblue was active purifier I designed in 2017 which was awarded a Reddot Design Award in 2018 with over 15 patents and sales over 3 million USD. We also designed the Smart Respiration Sensing Technology for Cambridge Mask which was one of the earliest patents the company filed in early 2015.
When we started our design exercise the pandemic was starting to get extremely violent and with a low resource setting we were cut off access for most of the prototyping luxuries back in China.We spent weeks putting our learnings together and decided to solve 3 practical problems for mask users to increase the safety and make the entire process sustaible.
Problem 1 : Mask Fit
Most of the people don't wear their protective equipment properly , when it comes to face masks users tend to not care about fit resulting a loose seal putting the users at risk .
Problem 2 : Mask Usage
Every facemask finishes its lifetime after certain hours of usage this is mainly due to breathing rate, pollution level outside and filter material specifications.If a user actively uses a surgical mask for 8 hours a day you need 122 mask per month . If you use reusable masks even with anti bacterial and anti viral coatings with the anti bacterial properties will be reduced with each wash so it's necessary to know when to wash your mask to extend the lifetime of mask.
Problem 3: CO2 Build up
When you start using masks for extended hours and highly active environments the CO2 build-up can increase with increase breathing rates end up hypoxic situations where even cause death due to lack of O2 Supply.
Our teams of incredible scientists designers and engineers came together and started working on a printable sensor technology that can be attached for facemasks that can track the respiration behavior characteristics such as breath rate, the core body temperature, respiration anomalies of the user as well as mask usage and fit.
We started using graphene and invented a sensing element which can be directly printed on masks.
What is Graphene?
Graphene is also known as the wonder material is aa 2-dimensional layer of carbon atoms packed into a hexagonal pattern, while only being an atom wide 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair small material stretch 4x its length also has 200x the tensile strength of stainless steel.
Building Material Sensors
With the pandemic at its peak, the team worked on prototyping material sensors to work to test if we can build a sensing element capable of detecting breath bio-markers.
We had to strictly follow a timeline and inject capital resources to create a product with limited resources , with our years of doing product development we stick to the main principles DFM — Design for Manufacturing . We were not prototyoing to publish in a journal but wanted to build a breakthrough product which generates value to the end consumer that can be mass manufactured at scale.
In the early exploration phase, we stick to an open exponential learning framework
- Moonshot Thinking. Reset our operating systems and decouple from the existing knowledge bias
- Moonshot Launch. With a hacker Mindset to try and fail many experiments to find the Cost to Value balance with technology iterations ..
- Moonshot landing. Using rapid prototyping to create a product MVP that archives the goals of the project
- Transform yourself. Transform individually to accept learn and grow facing realities with high optimism .
- Transform your company.Adapt to grow at a low resource setting with commitment , consious and competent with high working ethics.
It's easy to create a buzz with a product when problems become massive with claims that create vague hope for consumers, practicing conscious engineering companies nor inventors should make claims without testing the products with the highest standard possible testing respiration devices can cost starting from ten thousand euros, following standard strict practice in product development will help the creators to not to be trapped in the fantasy world of achievement as we call it in startups eating your own dog food
Looking forward to writing up the part 2 where we will be discussing DFM prototyping process with best practices for advance technology products.
