Last night we had a good long design session at St Patrick’s Technical College.
The St Patrick’s students have done a fine job building the seating buck (the full scale mockup of the seating layout). It enabled us to hone in on improvements to the body’s shape, size and layout. We made various changes to the seat heights and locations, and were able to better visualise the suspension mounting points, the steering and the centre of mass.
It’s a well known fact that medical equipment donated to hospitals in developing countries often ends up on the junk heap. One study conducted by the Engineering World Health group at Duke University found that up to 98% of donated medical equipment in developing countries is broken within five years.
After an initial session getting a feel for the overall dimensions of our vehicles, St Patrick’s College is about to start building a “seating buck”, which will enable us to refine the layout, dimensions and construction methods. Whilst doing so, they will draw on ergonomics data developed over many decades for conventional vehicle design.
At last night’s design workshop we were joined by Steve, a teacher from St Patrick’s Technical College.
St Patrick’s is a technical secondary college in northern Adelaide for Year 11 and 12 students, focusing exclusively on trade training.
A group of Year 12 students from an applied engineering class will assist us with several key activities over coming months: Continue reading
The Internet has changed everything.
It has enabled a woman born in rural Kadoma in Zimbabwe to find and make contact with a technical group in Australia, and to enable them to work closely with an Italian NGO and a hospital in northern Zimbabwe.
It is helping us to develop electric vehicles powered simply by the sun, which will save lives in rural Zimbabwe where many people have limited access to the Internet and electricity.
The Internet empowers all of us. Social media enables us all to have an impact which is unprecedented in human history.
We all have influence. We have networks of people who listen to what we say, and each person in each network has their own influence with their own networks. With the power of social media, our influence and our impacts are amplified.
If you like what we are doing with the African Solar Taxi project, please use your influence to spread the word. This project has the potential to do amazing things, and you can be a part of it. Simply promote what we are doing by liking our Facebook page and posts, our website blog posts, retweeting us or emailing about us to your friends. Your influence will help this project become a reality.
Thanks!
Like many countries in Africa, Zimbabwe has been hit hard by the HIV and AIDS epidemic. Approximately 13.7% of the Zimbabwean population currently live with HIV.
Despite many challenges which have exacerbated the spread of HIV in Zimbabwe in recent years, including the political, social and economic situation, a severe cholera epidemic, high rates of unemployment and a near collapse of the public health system, Zimbabwe’s efforts to combat HIV are now yielding significant results. Continue reading
On Wednesday evening we met for another design workshop. The focus this week was on the dimensions of the vehicle’s body. Here’s the result of our efforts:
