Last but not least in our series about IF WE Challenge dreamers, here comes our great winner Geoffrey Cooper. His IF WE Dream was “IF WE design a rolling tree planting robot, we can send them out to replant forests and restore a desertified land. Let’s make it happen!!“. Geoffrey is anindustrial designer coming from Canada and lived in Los Angeles at the time of the challenge.

So without further ado, watch the video below to see Geoffrey’s brilliant idea illustrated:

Q: Could you let us know where the idea of a rolling tree planting robot came from?

The tree planting robot idea was inspired by my step-brother, who worked as a tree planter in Canada for many years. From him, I learned how difficult it is for people to plant and maintain trees in remote areas, and how important it is to keep our forests alive. That topic lingered in my mind for a long time, and I also looked into the topic of desertification. I discovered that many deserts and plains around the world were once thriving forests, but turned into barren land because of the impact left by man, animals, and climate change.

While I was an Industrial Design student in college, I came up with the idea of designing a rolling tree planting robot that would tackle this problem. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to fit the project into my curriculum, but I have thought extensively about it, and would like to pursue it.

Q: More specifically, how would you see the rolling planting robot actually work?

I envision a group of autonomous tree-planting robots sent out into a deforested area, that would work together to achieve the tasks necessary for planting and ensuring the growth of trees. These tasks would include navigating natural terrain with the use of sensors, coordinating with other tree planting robots working nearby, loading saplings from a larger vessel, boring holes into the ground for the saplings, and cutting away the weeds around planted trees to ensure their growth. The robots would also be able to scan the elements in a landscape to determine the most habitable areas for the trees. After several weeks, the robots would return to the same location to maintain and check the status of the young trees.

The robots would be small (maybe the size of a wheelbarrow), would traverse terrain on wheels, and would be powered partially by solar panels on top of the robots. The robots would work alongside a human operator who would oversee a fleet of tree planting robots. The operator would plan out the operation, and could be on-site in case anything goes wrong.

Q: How would you like to see this idea developped?

I am very interested in making this idea a reality, and would be interested in working with Dassault Systèmes on it if possible. I currently work as an Interaction Designer, and have a background in Industrial Design, so I am confident with my abilities to design systems and physical devices that could work cohesively. The area of the robot project that I am not so familiar with is the robotics, programming, and manufacturing of such a robot. As with any project, I believe that strong teamwork creates big changes, and I believe that such a team could be assembled for the tree planting robot project.

Stay tuned to see how we helped Geoffrey get started with his project

Following our previous blog post on IF WE Challenge third winner Andjelic Zoran, the turn is now to our second prize winner Ismael Cendejas. Ismael is coming from Mexico, but has recently studied in University of Victoria, BC, Canada. His winning IF WE Dream was: “IF WE design more exoskeletons we can help more people with different capacity”.

As a matter of fact, Ismael is working on two projects in this domain:

I have two projects about Exoskeletons. The first is about the Design of an Exoskeleton for training people with Parkinson’s Disease, which is part of a thesis of a bachelor. The second one is a Design and Matlab simulation of a portable exoskeleton for hand rehabilitation. [...] The most critical engineering discipline in these projects I think is Systems Engineering because all the diseases and patients are different, in that way they need to be treated personally, implying the necessity to develop a program for each one.

Ismael was kind enough to share the following pictures with us

Ismael has been using CATIA and SIMULIA for his project. As a winner of the second prize, we’re happy to provide Ismael with a high performance laptop (shown above) coming with 3DS software, thus adding our small contribution to this project with a great social impact potential.

Keep up the good work, Ismael! 

Following up our introductory post on World-Changing Dreamers revealed by the IF WE Challenge, this is a first post in a series about our three lucky winners.

Let’s begin with the second runner-up, Andjelic Zoran. His IF WE Dream was: “IF WE have enough 3D printers, we could make custom made prosthetic limbs for all victims of landmines and renew their faith in science”. Andjelic talks about his dream with great passion:

I currently work as an industrial equipment designer in Italy and often stay after work to use your software, I am simply in love with it.  But I’m originating from Bosnia and Herzegovina and there are a lot of people injured by land mines in my country.

The main thing that bothers them with their prosthetics besides the limited functionality due to limited budget is the aesthetics. Usually they come in skin-color, that’s pretty creepy because it looks like a puppet part. Many of them are young, have psychological issues and have lost their faith in science, because of its involvement in weapon design. Now they can see athletes at the Olympic games with state-of-art prosthetics, yet they can’t have such prosthetics.

Since I have skills in surface design, my dream is to return in Bosnia and use my knowledge to help this people.  Modern technology makes possible to scan injured limbs and 3D print custom, more ergonomic prosthetic limbs. Such equipment is very expensive and I know it is impossible to help everyone at the moment but I want to start and raise money to fulfill my dream. In Bosnia my friends have some CNC machines able to produce some parts for those limbs. I will find my way through humanitarian organizations to get appropriate 3D scanners and 3D printers for custom made parts but we will certainly need software that is able to use scanned dates, transform them in STL file, support 3D printing and CNC machining.

I hope that we will be able to produce prosthetics that will be more functional, more comfortable and make some people happy again. I also hope that your company will give a contribution. So I send you my concept of prosthetic limb. I will add outside parts when we become able to produce them.

As a winner of the third prize, Andjelic was provided with a high performance laptop and a CATIA licence. Here is what he wrote us when he received the package:

I have received the package with laptop and I am very happy right now. [...] This will help me a lot to make my dreams come true.

We definitely hope so, Andjelic, and we’re glad to bring a humble contribution to your world-changing dream!