Thomas Alva Edison, the renowned inventor, lived in a house with a large front garden and an iron gate at its entrance. It
is said that friends who came to visit were both astonished and annoyed to discover that they were forced to push hard to swing open the gate. Time and again, they complained to Thomas to fix the creaking, old gate and Edison kept promising to oil the hinges and spare his guests the trouble, but never delivered. It was only after his death, at a ripe old age (84), that the matter came to light: the gate had been connected to a pump, and each time it was opened, water was pumped into the inventor’s bathtub.
We often tell this story to demonstrate one of the creative templates used in SIT, called Task Unification. We define Task Unification as assigning a new and additional task to an existing resource. In Edison’s story, The existing resource was the energy of the visitors, normally used only to open the gate. It was given the additional task of operating the water pump.
These days, the same concept is used in the PlayPump, which uses the force of children turning a merry-go-round to pump water in areas with poor access to clean drinking water.
Not surprisingly, as sustainability becomes a key principle in the design and development of products, Task Unification is used to take advantage of existing resources, since they are becoming increasingly scarce. In many recent examples, however, Task Unification is used not to pump water, but to generate energy. Look, for example, at this revolving door. It contains an energy generator, so that when visitors use their energy (existing resource) to move the door, they also operate the generator (additional task) which creates and stores electricity for other uses. This same concept can also be seen in energy-generating floors in dance clubs, in subway ticket gates, and in energy-generating gym equipment. In all of these examples, someone’s energy is used to do both what it was originally intended to do (open a door, dance, play or exercise) and also to do something else (generate electricity or pump water).
Innovative ideas share common creative templates. This insight is one of the fundamental principles of SIT. So to us, it’s no wonder that a concept that has proven itself appears again and again in a variety of new “skins”. Although the Task Unification template is a universal tool for innovating, allowing the problem-solver to utilize almost any resource to perform almost any task, just this one application – using human energy to create electricity – leads to endless possibilities. Think of all the places where people push, pull, or turn “things”. How can you use this power to generate electricity, or create another useful, more sustainable, service? Opportunities to sustainably generate electricity increase significantly if you think also of other resources that move “things”. Usually we think of colossal forces such as the ocean, or wind power, but there is energy to harvest in more modest applications such as this EcoPower faucet, where the stream of water is used to charge the power supply of the faucet, removing the need to connect it to the building’s electrical system or to replace batteries.
As expert innovators, we believe that Task Unification is one of the keys to being both innovative and sustainable. (See Amnon’s post about Sustainability and Innovation.)
So take a look around you: what are your available resources? What other tasks can they perform?
Ist time to this site
And I love it already
A funny example comes to my mind:
-People like me who don’t sleep in the same position all night, might generate energy while turning over, and then accumulate that energy in a capacitor of a special, pressure to electricity converter matress.
Have a nice 2009!!!
Fabian
Hi Fabian and welcome :|||[o|O]|||: ! Happy new year to both of you.
I like the idea of using a mattress. The fact that most of us sleep on mattresses with springs make them ideal for harvesting energy, because the moving mechanical element is already there. (Existing resource!) We also generate a lot of heat when we sleep, and that could be useful, too.
Shlomit
Shlomit
On this note, and on a potential much larger scale, an Israeli company (http://www.innowattech.co.il/) is working on a road (or railroad) that generates electricity from the weight of the traffic that runs over it.
More here, plus many other similar examples on the bottom links:
http://www.gizmag.com/piezoelectric-road-harvests-traffic-energy-to-generate-electricity/10568/
yehuda,
the example is very interesting, although the discussion afterwards in regards to the violation of 2nd law of thermodynamics yes or no is interesting aswell.
there is no refernce there for the cost effectiveness of such patent… any knowledge on that type of info?
hi Shlomit
Good point. lots of opportunities around. Just wanted to comment that in Edison’s gate one tends ot focus on the fact that the guests received the additional task of pumping up the water. But it is worthwhile noting that there is another element that received a new task - the gate. Normally its task is to guard the entrance and here it is used to convert (unwittingly) the guests’ energy into pumping energy. This observation may be useful because there is a pattern here as well:
1) most Task Unifications dont come alone, rather they create opportunities for chains of TUs. for example, in the mattress idea, one can think of activities other than sleep that may generate even more energy, then one thinkos of the capacitator and looks around for candidates to do this job without need for a brand new element, so maybe the PC’s battery can retain the energy, then you can think of a variety of functions that are needed around and in the bed anyway and see if you can pump the energy directly to them. then you think that actually if someone is moving a lot in their sleep this isnt so good, so why not go for a feedback loop - while you move the energy is used to lull you to a more relaxed slumber and when you are relaxed there is no need to do so etc etc
2) very often, in a TU idea, there is need ofr a “mediating TU” as in the gate, because it is not easy to put the component to work directly. many an idea has been killed because the invetors stopped one TU too early.
Hi Amnon,
I totally agree, but it made me think that to maintain the sustainability of the idea, it’s really important that the “mediating TU” is part of the closed world. If not, then new elements are brought in, and they have an impact in and of themselves. This is actually true for many of the above examples, because they use various elements for creating the electric charge, that were probably not there before. Granted, Edison, too, must have connected the gate and water pump (two elements of the CW) with some additional element, and that element may have been new. The slickness and sustainability of these solutions really depends on the total cost and environmental impact of the new element/s used for the unification. See, for example, the following example, and consider the weights and magnets used to create the electric charge (the mediating elements):
http://springwise.com/eco_sustainability/charging_mobile_phones_by_danc/
I don’t normally comment on blogs but your post was a real help. Thank you for a great topic, I will be sure to bookmark your site and check it out again. Cheers, Amy xXx.
Thanks, Amy, I’m glad you liked the post.
As I said to Amnon, I’m intrigued to know what is the overall environmental impact of all of the examples we’ve discussed here. All the articles mentiononly the energy generated by the devices, but none of the energy invested in creating them, let alone the raw materials, transportation, etc. So whereas it seems that these inventions would “pay back for themselves” in electricity costs quite quickly, there is additional environmental cost that is not being captured in this calculation…
Neat writing,, will come back again/
Another example:
http://www.designboom.com/contest/view.php?contest_pk=28&item_pk=33866&p=1
Finally, a good site that isn’t in my face trying to constantly sell me something. Thanks, please keep up the good work.