iShovel: Early Stage Automated Robotic Snow Shovel

Ever wonder what life would be like if you didn’t have to shovel your driveway?  What If you didn’t have to pay someone to shovel your driveway?  In the not so distant future, the iShovel may be coming to a store near you.  This battery powered shoveling device will begin shoveling at the first detection of snow accumulation.  It’s built with two independent motors and an automatic snow sensor.  Seriously, how awesome would this robotic shovel be?

This iShovel is the “World’s Smartest Snow Shovel”!  Based on, what appears to be a similar platform at the iRobot’s Roomba, the iShovel records the artificial boundaries programmed into the robot.  In the harsh New England weather, it would have be great at the first sign of snow to have the iShovel.  As robotics become less expensive, it will hopefully become a household item.

Even though the iShovel is in first generation prototype, it has recently been featured on Bob Vila’s home show as well as Good Morning America.  The early stage prototype has gotten rave reviews and is hopeful to compete with the gas powered snow blowers within the next year.  According to the iShovel’s website, the product is significantly more efficient with regard to clearing the driveway.  Because it shovels in short spurts, it manages to shovel every few inches.  As a result, it uses less energy in relatively short cycles using battery power.

One of the real tests for this new product is how does it handle fast falling wet snow?  But theoretically, if it works as it says it does, snow should never pile about 3 inches.  This will be a future product to continue to watch to ease the maintence of living in an area with snowfall.

Although this product is in early stage development, it does suggest a great new concept that will continue to promote robotics in (or outside) the home.

By Jessica Chin, Product Engineering Manager at Flashpoint Development

A large part of duck tape prototyping is doing it for cheap. This could mean $20, $200 or even more… but it is still a lot cheaper than a professional prototype. The cost of duck tape prototypes is mostly materials. There is no expensive CAD, engineering or design to be done, only fabrication time. The hidden cost of duck tape prototypes is the time, but since most inventors do this stage in their basement or workshop time isn’t a wallet type expense.

You can save time by doing your homework on materials, supplies and parts that you expect to need. Most can probably be found walking around the box stores in your area, but you could save some money and some alteration time by finding the materials online. Beware however to check the specifications / drawings of these parts to make sure they are what you think they are, and not just a pretty picture.

The major difference between duck tape prototyping and all other types of fabrication is the variety of materials you will use. You can use wood, plastic, metal and everything in between.

Also beware that you will probably use more materials than you expect. You will make mistakes on your early prototypes, having a few extra materials will help avoid wasting more time by going back to the store or waiting for shipping. Having extras will come in handy, but always save your receipts and return unused materials, that money can come in handy later in the development process.

Lets go over some basics about prototyping starting with “duck tape prototypes”. Duck tape prototypes are the very first physical representations of your idea. This phase can be filled with lots of satisfaction for optimists and visionaries or disappointment for the pessimists and short sighted.

Duck tape prototypes are made from available materials found at Home Depot, the grocery store or around the house. The parts are altered using a dremel, file or epoxy putty. These newly altered parts are then assembled using epoxy, super glue and duck tape (hence the name).

These prototypes might not work. The limitations of using existing pieces, the alterations that change the structural integrity and the complications of bonding different shapes and materials will produce defects.

Are they failures? Do they have any value if they don’t work? Well I think Edison said it best when asked about his many failures at building a light bulb… “We have only found 586 ways that won’t work and won’t have to be tried again. Soon, we will find one that does.”

These prototypes are very important at the very beginning. They might not prove the concept, work well enough for testing and look nice enough to present to investors but they add value in many other aspects. You can discover if the method is right, major design issues and experiment with different materials.

It may take many or just a few duck tape prototypes to get a sense of what design will actually work. Then the deisgn, engineering and manufacturing aspects come into play….

Inventors, engineers and designers often become paralyzed by perfectionism. Getting your product just right has benefits, but also some real costs and evaluating them rationally instead of just constantly going back to the drawing board is important. To do this analysis an inventor needs to fully understand the costs of heading to market with an imperfect product or redesigning.

The costs of perfectionism:

1.  Time to market:  As you make revisions, there are other people willing to go to market with an imperfect product.  If you have ever been working on a product for years and some thing similar but not as good launches, this lesson is a hard one to learn.  Lets say that you launch 6 months later than you competition with a better product, now you are faced with the daunting task of trying to unseat them at retailers.  The conversation will probably go something like, but we have something similar and it selling (well or badly, it doesn’t really matter) and we have already set up operating arrangements with them.  There are lots of examples of products that were late to market and surpassed a first mover (they are well publicized), but as a whole most items on the rack were the first to market.

2.  Development costs: No matter how you decide to improve, whether it be a CAD redesign, a new industrial design, or another prototype these are all extra costs.  Often it isn’t the first redesign that affects the projects overall budget, but when you start redesigning and redesigning it becomes a habit and costs will escalate.

The benefits of perfectionism

1.  Product Improvement.  Hopefully after going back and redesigning the product works better, looks more pleasing is cheaper to produce or another important product characteristic.

2.  Easier Market Launch:  With a perfect product, marketing, selling and getting retailers should be easier.  There will be no bad press about this function or that because everything will work beautifully.  And of course the market is much less likely to reject the idea if there are no flaws.

3. Personal Reflection:  Knowing what you put out into the market or in front of potential licensees is important for your brain.  The anxiety of knowing that one more thing should be done disappears if everything is just right.

Other things to think about

Products rarely go through one generation.  If your product is successful, improvements will be necessary no matter what.  In fact, there is a number of cases when redesigns and subsequent versions made more money than the original (IPod!).  Often times going for perfect is also an indication of focusing on technology push (the solution) over market pull (the problem).  If your focus is on solving the problem, then you know when the product is good enough because it solves the problem.  However, when you are focused on the solution the drive to improve upon a solution beyond what is actually required is a common tendancy.

Where does this conflict come from?

Often this issue arises when you get inventors with different backgrounds.  A former corporate inventor who worked in a business setting knows that the bottom line of development costs drives product launch as much as development actually being done.  While heartbreaking the first time, an inventor in this position realizes that the product will either sink or swim and often the further development would not have influenced the market acceptance.  An entrepreneur inventor focuses on development costs and first to market.  These forces drive the entrepreneur to deliver a product that is good enough, while knowing that improvements can be made for the second version.  When inventing is your hobby, redesigns and further development is part of the fun.  Unfortunately this is often where inventors get stuck, spend a lot of money only to find that their product has been launched an move onto another idea.

How Do You Know If You Are Done?

The quick answer is prototype, test and ask the market.  If you have something that works and people like, then you are done.  If you get substantial (you will never please everyone, but when 9/10 people from your target market say X, its substantial) feedback leading you to a different direction then you might want go back and work on it.

IS YOUR PRODUCT DONE?

As we are beginning the CAD work for a new product today, I thought I would relay two important insight that are often missed by first timers.  Moving from 2-D to 3-D can be strenuous, so here is some help.

1.  Often 2-D drawings don’t account for requirements like board size, hand size, etc.  It might not be possible to get your napkin drawing into a functional product identical to your sketch.  When you incorporate those into a 3-D CAD, often the style can be altered.  Unfortunately, form follows function (don’t know where that comes from but it is a rule of thumb) and so let the style change but retain its core features.

2. Another very important point of CAD design is to go phase by phase.  As we have never prototyped this part before, we are looking for the first round of testing.  Will the design work?  Will the product be comfortable to use?  Is the sizing correct?  These are a few of the basic questions we would like to answer, or facilitate our client to answer.  However often first timers having heard of design for manufacture (DFM) and perhaps because they are eager to get the product on the shelf get lost here.  Do you need part structural analysis, draft / rib design, snap fit design?  No!  Why invest in making a part production ready, when you don’t really know it will work!  More importantly, the testing will often require changing the design a little.  If you change a dimension, all of the production ready designing needs to be altered as well, costing more and more. If you wait to do make the design production ready until it has passed at least the first round of prototyping, you will save a lot of money, time and head ache.

Just a few hints from your friendly neighborhood invention product development consultants at Flashpoint Development.

If you have been following along, you have made a lot of progress on your idea.  If not do a quick catch up, you will learn a lot and we will be on the same page:

Concept Research

Market Research

This is where we often get clients so for some self promotion a list of our product development services and information on how we can help you.  Okay now that we are done with that, I will continue as if I am running the show as an inventor / entrepreneur.

Product Engineering Spec (preliminary)- You have started to define the product as the customer sees it, but now you have to go through and find the engineering requirements for the product.  If you have some electronics functions, you need an E.E. and so forth, Start a document outlining these areas and what expertise they might require.

Preliminary Feasibility- Find people to ask about your technical requirements.  Find friends of friends and ask them general questions about the engineering requirements (social networking can help here).  Is it a big deal, or easy?  Has anyone done something like this in the past?  You don’t have to divulge your idea to get some good feedback.

Make a “Ducktape Prototype”- Make something that illustrates the form or function.  It doesn’t have to be pretty, just has to do something.  Don’t go overboard on this, (I once spent a lot of money tweaking and building more of my ducktape prototype and honestly it was a waste of time & money).  It will probably not qualify as a reduction to practice (utility patent requirement), but it will help rally your team (we’ll get to that).

Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, are you an E.E.?  If you know a little about board design / prototyping perhaps you can get away with doing the first prototype, but it may take hours away from what you are good at like market research.  If you know nothing about circuit board design you have two options, pay someone or get an E.E. on your team.  Getting good team members is a large topic and will probably be another separate blog post.

Examine requirements-  I have been talking about circuit boards,  and E.E.s but there are often many different areas of expertise that are required to design, develop and launch a product.  Areas include: industrial design, mechanical engineering / CAD, material science / manufacturing and so on based on the area of your invention.   Do some preliminary research and put it in your product specifications document.

These steps are quick to write about, but often take a long time to execute.  Some of these topics / subtopics will be expanded on in future blog posts, but you should have an idea of what to do now.  And if you get stuck, we can help you develop your product.

Process

Prototyping is a big part of what we do at Flashpoint Development and we believe several aspects are very important and we will share them with you. A prototype is built to test the overall or specific parts of a prototype.  Develop a clear goal of what you would like the prototype to represent.  Too often inventors / product developers will try and take on too much right off the bat.  Proof of concept (reduction to practice, required for a patent), functionality (works like), form (look a like), fully integrated, and production ready are all different prototype stages, Not all products need to go through a few different stages, but most successful products do.  All prototyping methods have limitations and advantages, understand what method you use and how it will affect what you are trying to test.

For design based, ergonomic products, several form prototypes (at least virtually) need to be created.  These prototypes should incorporate the dimensional requirements of the functionality, but don’t need to be integrated.  They are for soley testing the feel, look and emotions of the product.  These are okay for market research, but when they ask to see it working tell them the engineers are working on that one today. For an example of the form path, I have included some pictures of my seond product before joining Flashpoint Development.

First prototype, purely for form.  It was a diced up brita filter with a smoke alarm ducktaped on the back colored in with a sharpie.

Secondround of prototyping, evaluating general form, size and color.

One of the third round of form prototypes, before we made the integrated version.

NOTE: These pictures demonstrate the form prototype process.  While this was going on our amazing electrical engineers were prototyping the circuit board.  When you are prototyping two different parts of the product at the same time it reduces time to market and is called “concurrent prototyping”.  This method works well when there are two different areas that need to fit together, but not work together.  For a product like that try “staged prototyping” which we talk about next.

For very complicated high tech products that require several different systems, I recommend going piece by piece and integrating the before it also known as “staged prototyping”.  See the “prototyping cone” and start at the bottom…

Do the easiest or first iteration of the prototype, make sure it works and then build on it.  This way you can control some of the variables of testing.

Pitfalls

Once you have your prototyping goal, do it.  Don’t get side tracked by a different concept or design.  Be sure to write the thought down, but finish the current goal.  Why you ask do I recommend finishing the prototype when you have already decided to change it?

Well many reasons:

• prototypes have value (done ones more than 2 unfinished ones)
• learn about the new design by trying the old one out
• can say “i was right the first time” without wasting time
• test other areas of the product
• there will be a second prototype

Stay tuned for advice on testing and redesigning prototypes, comint up soon.

The Stack Master development story continues with Industrial Design, Product Design, Virtual Testing, Prototyping, Prototype Testing and Prototype Redesigns (we like to call them enhancements). If you are new to the story, check out our past posts:

Development Project Introduction

New Product Research

Feasibility Analysis, Customer Needs and Design Tools

You will be caught up quickly and enjoy this post.

Industrial Design

The preliminary design was based off our competive and market needs, customer needs, and our designer’s creativity.  After presenting the concepts to the CEO of PaperPro, we decided on a product direction.  We created several variations of the direction and the Uber Fusion Curves won overall.

Product Design & Virtual Testing

We identified the critical components of the technology that needed to be designed them in Solidworks.

We knew that we had to scale up the power spring (to 100 pages) without requiring too much more force.  But how much?  Well COSMOS answered that question through our virtual testing.  We created a graph based on those results showing the relationship between thickening the spring and the force of the spring.

Prototyping

With a good understanding of the product design and an updated CAD virtual prototype we sent The Stack Master off to China to be prototyped.  We used clear stereo lithography, a common practice because it allows you to see into the prototype and observe the mechanism working.

Prototype Testing

Testing the Stack Master prototype was quick, informative and effective.  The striker (part that shoots the staple) and other plastic parts needed to be metal didn’t last long, so we commissioned those parts to be made by CNC machining.  This lead to more testing, but it wasn’t long before we had a decent list of required enhancements.

The enhancements should be organized to maximize an effective solution to the cause of the issue. A format that we use is

1. Part, organize the changes by major part
2. Issue, what went wrong?
3. Cause, why did it go wrong?
4. Resolution, how are we going to fix it?

Sometimes it is easier to answer questions three and four with a graphical illustration.  An example of the visualization that we used is:

Once we had a good idea of the issues and ways to improve the prototype, we began the engineering changes.

More to come on our Prototype as we prepare for production and market launch.

Flashpoint’s Managing Partner is presenting his paper “On the Use of Global Cost Modeling Early in New Product Development” this weekend at the IEEE International Engineering Management conference in Portugal.  This paper outlines the changes in the new product development industry, discusses the effect of those changes in the new product development process and finally illustrates an evolved new product development process by discussing a project undertaken by Flashpoint Development.  Today, I will focus on the first two topics as we will provide an in depth case study of the project in future posts.

Outsourcing production manufacturing has become the norm of many U.S. companies because it allows the domestic companies to focus on core competencies and often is more cost effective.  The growth of product development technologies like computer aided design (CAD), manufacturing networks (www.mfg.com) and rapid prototyping has allowed accurate manufacturing costs attainable earlier in the product development process. How this change has occurred and how it can help you is best displayed by comparing the traditional New Product Development Process with a process that incorporates cost modeling.

(Ulrich and Eppinger 2004 NPD Process)

In this traditional NPD process, costs can be estimated in the concept development and system level design but accurate product costs are received after the detailed design stage.

The  GNPD Process takes advantage of the ability to request part, assembly and production costs early in the design.  The cost modeling perspective allows developers to understand the cost implications of design trade-offs (complex snap in part or use of a fastener).  These decisions are examined before rapid prototyping, which leads to more accurate testing and fewer redesigns before production.

So the conclusion of this rather academic post is to contact and work with manufacturers even before prototyping.  I would even venture (not in the paper) to talk to manufacturers once you have a good sketch.  Send the sketch in pdf or jpg format to manufacturers and see what they say.  Their input at that stage, although the costs will be estimated, will help further your understanding of the requirements to actually produce your product.

Check out www.mfg.com.

If you have a CAD file, you can post and within hours get bids from manufacturers worldwide. Very useful for finding suppliers and also cost modeling during the design phase.