Inventions of tomorrow displayed at BU’s Festival of Design and Technology
A record number of visitors came to BU's Festival of Design and Technology to see creations and designs produced by final year students.
The Festival, which was open to the public and industry, is a showcase of work created by around 200 final year design and creative technology students.
Over 700 people visited the Festival to see ideas on display including a bicycle ambulance for remote areas, a self-inflating life vest and a futuristic beach pod.
BA (Hons) Industrial Design student Tobias Donohoe was exhibiting his final year project - the Post-Life Vessel, an alternative to a funeral urn which uses seeded paper to enable a plant to grow from the burial plot.
Tobias, who won the Best Industrial Design student prize, said: "It’s really good to be able to speak to people who have no idea about the project and being able to explain it to them and have their feedback – especially with businesses coming in and hearing what they’ve got to say.
"It really gives you a bit of a boost – you think of it as just as university project, but a day like this makes you realise that you could take it further if you wished."
BA/BSc (Hons) Product Design student Douglas Powell has created the bicycle ambulance for use in rural areas in Sub Saharan Africa.
"I grew up in Zimbabwe and still have family in Tanzania, and I've seen this problem first hand so I started investigating it further, and TransAid, a charity that I linked up with, provided me with case studies," he said.
"It's a serious problem that can be solved - 80 per cent of maternal deaths can be prevented by getting the women to hospital in a short period of time, but the average distance that someone has to travel to a hospital from the rural areas is between 14 and 40 kilometres.
"So the design is able to be attached to a bicycle but by changing the tow arm it can be attached to a motorcycle for those longer distances."
Winner of the Best Music and Audio Technology stand award Michael Franks was getting people to try out his prototype headset for an audio-visual aid for blind people.
"It's inspired by bats and the way they get around," Michael explained.
"Sensors detect where obstacles are and feed that back through the headphones – so you hear a sound coming from the direction that an obstacle is in."
He added: "It’s been great. The degree at Bournemouth covers a wide range of things so we’ve got skills in lots of different areas of audio, which means we can kind of go into lots of different jobs and lots of different markets."
The Festival also featured a Business Breakfast, attended by industry representatives and local businesses who then toured the exhibition.
Around 150 pupils from local schools also attended a special Schools day as part of the Festival, which featured the chance to tour the exhibit and a guest lecture delivered by a Dyson representative.
