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

“IF WE ask the right questions, we can change the world”… Last summer, we asked what were YOUR World-Changing Dreams. The idea was pretty simple: sharing dreams with just a sentence beginning with the words “IF WE”.  Through a contest called the “IF WE Challenge”, we would collect those through Facebook, Twitter, 3ds.com, our blogs and third-party blogs. Oh, and because you could share your “IF WE” Dream through Twitter, it had to be not longer than 140 characters… pretty much a challenge in itself!

Anyway, we collected as many as 550 contributions from all over the world! We boiled them down to about 85 of them (with criteria of interest, feasibility, fit with sustainability…). Then we got back in touch with authors and asked them for more details about their ideas. Boiled down again to about 20 that we submitted to the final Jury. Then the Jury came up with our 3 final lucky winners (in our next blog post series, we’ll let you know more about each winner and their respective projects):

1. Geoffrey Cooper, Canada: “IF WE designed a rolling tree planting robot, we could send them out to replant forests and restore deserted lands. Let’s make it happen!”
2. Ismael Moreno Cendejas, Mexico: “IF WE design more exoskeletons we can help more people with different capacity”
3. Andjelic Zoran, Serbia: “IF WE have enough 3D printers, we could make custom made prosthetic limbs for all victims of landmines and renew their faith in science”

Yet in the process of selecting the dreams, we found that others were also pretty cool so we came up with this short video illustrating 10 of them:

Thank you to Ozgur (Turkey), Hemanth (India), Christopher (France), Cristian (Cameroon), Josh (United States), Andjelic (Serbia), Marinescu (Romania), Noam (Israel), Swapnil (India), Goeffrey (Canada)… and thanks again to all participants of the “IF WE Challenge” in 2012!

And expect a new edition of the Challenge in 2013!

Last week I was at the French startup event LeWeb’12 to get some fresh ideas about digital marketing trends on the startup scene. The theme of this year was the IoT aka the “Internet of Things”, so you could find many connected devices : smartphones, thermostats, watches, drones, headsets, weight or blood trackers that were all mobile and connected things. So why not connect these geeky devices to more familiar transportation & mobility products? IF WE connect internet and transportation, can it offer innovative and profitable mobility concepts?

I was there in my reflexions when I saw the Renault booth at LeWeb and just decided to chat with them to share ideas. And since I had my smartphone with me, I used it to record this impromptu one shot video, so pardon its low quality.

Getting people back to work thanks to the Mobility community

I met with Florent d’Yvoire, who is project manager on the Renault-MOBILIZ Social Business project to know more about mobility innovation. Our main discussion was about the Renault-MOBILIZ which I found very innovative but not on technology as we usually expect, but more on the business side: This project was born at the Corporate Social Responsibility department of Renault with a vision: looking for sustainable ways to help the poorest benefit from an affordable mobility, so that they can find work and get out of poverty. Beyond that, the innovation is also in the business model that is inspired by the microcredit concept developed by Muhammad Yunus so that it can ensure the financial viability of the project.

In this context the Renault-MOBILIZ program is looking for more connections within the transportation and mobility community of professionals: they are looking for partnerships with entreprises and citizens on providing products, services, and assistance in getting driver’s licenses. Dassault Systèmes can certainly help with its communication to transportation & mobility professionals. More to come on this…

A car-sharing pilot with electric cars

Renault also launched Twizyway, an innovative car-sharing concept in the Paris area with 50 Twizy. These 100% battery-driven cars are beautiful, fun and safe to drive. They are available all day and are tracked and booked via smartphone apps. People use these cars then leave them in the location of their convenience to ensure maximum flexibility for drivers. Customers just scan a QR Code on the windshield and go. So this is quite similar to the Autolib project deployed near there in Paris, but with less constraints at first glance.

Digital apps on the dashboard of your car

The final topic presented by Renault was the second edition of their “call for apps” that will be installed on the dashboard of future cars in a tablet called R-Link. New Zoe and Clio models will benefit from them , Renault was there to call for startups willing to develop new services on their infrastructure.

Renault’s motto is “Drive the change”, now you can see why!  What about you, how would you match internet and transportation yourself? Do you see the digitalization of the world as an opportunity for new mobilities?

Thanks for posting your view in the “comments” field below

Jacques

Jacques Bidault is Industry Marketing Director, Transportation and Mobility at Dassault Systèmes