 |
| (Photo (montage): WFP) |
The US Air
Force can improve its method for dropping emergency supplies into disaster
areas, thanks to crowdsourcing and a pair of Dutch engineers. If a new airdrop
system devised by Siepko Bekkering and Michiel Hagenbeek works, relief teams
will be better able to supply disaster victims with food and medicines.
How do you
safely and effectively drop relief packages after an earthquake or hurricane?
The US Air Force has long struggled with that problem. Supplies have to be
parachuted far from the disaster-struck population so that falling packages
don’t kill or maim anyone. This is just one of the technical drawbacks of
airdrops, a method that saves lives but is often clumsy in practice.
Mass
collaboration
The Air
Force Research Lab (AFRL), which spends billions on advanced weapons systems,
put this low-tech question to a huge online community by crowdsourcing. It’s
part of a trend in Research and Development called Open Innovation. Instead of
solving all problems themselves, companies and even the world’s most powerful
airforce put their problems to the crowd, so anyone who likes a challenge can
give it a shot.
Dutch
engineer Siepko Bekkering was never one to enter online competitions before,
until his friend and fellow engineer Michiel Hagenbeek introduced him to the
world of ‘mass collaboration.’ Together, they started looking for design
challenges. They found one on the InnoCentive website: the US Air Force
Research Lab was looking for a better method for humanitarian airdrops. They
entered the contest, and within two months Bekkering and Hagenbeek had come up
with a winning design.
“I thought
it was interesting to develop something for the US military, especially because
it can help them give emergency relief to people in trouble,” Bekkering said.
“I also wanted to get involved in a crowdsourcing project because it’s a great
way to find a solution to a problem.”
Winning
designs
As a
finalist, Bekkering is $10,000 richer, but his design is now property of the
AFRL. It consists of specially-devised rollers and a special chute to eject
food packages from the aircraft, eliminating the heavy wooden pallets that
sometimes land on people who are awaiting help on the ground.
His design will
now compete with another crowdsourced solution the lab selected, from
Indonesian engineer Agung Nuswantoro from Tangerang City in Indonesia. That
design uses an automated conveyor belt that receives real-time data about
windspeed, terrain and drop locations to prevent dangerous mishaps. Nuswantoro
based the idea on his knowledge of conveyor belts in the coal industry.
Geek shortage
Now the lab
has to decide which of the two finalist designs, selected from over 1,100
entries, will become the standard for the Air Force. The laboratory, like many
other research bodies run by the US Defense department, is suffering from a major shortage of scientists and engineers. Advocates of crowdsourcing say Open
Innovation is the obvious solution.
Related Article:
"The New Paradigm of Reality" Part I/II – Feb 12, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Who/What is Kryon ?, Egypt Uprising, Iran/Persia Uprising, Peace in Middle East without Israel actively involved, Muhammad, "Conceptual" Youth Revolution, "Conceptual" Managed Business, Internet, Social Media, News Media, Google, Bankers, Global Unity,..... etc.)
No comments:
Post a Comment