An excavator with a cutter that looks like the mouth of a lamprey eel? Since 1955, Germany’s Red Dot Design Award has honoured the best in international design, including innovative construction product concepts.
Among more than 15,000 submissions from 70 countries in 2014, competition judges singled out two unique construction excavator concepts — the Hercules and the Pangea — produced by independent student teams from Coventry University in Coventry, England.
"Both entries originated as a live project in collaboration with Ricardo, a world-leading technology company," says Clive Hilton, Senior Lecturer, Product Design, Coventry University.
"Essentially, the brief was to radically rethink the paradigm of what an earth excavator could be, the emphasis being on improved energy efficiency."
The Hercules Concept Excavator won a Red Dot Best of Best Concept Award and was developed by students Selin Kosagan, Chi Liu, Danny Mc Elchar, Apostolos Papamatthaiakis, and Rahil Rupawala.
The Hercules helps to make precision excavation more efficient, combining digging and soil removal into a single, seamless operation.
The cutting head of the Hercules is composed of eight blades. While it looks like the mouth of a lamprey eel, team member Mc Elchar says that the cutting head was inspired by a river dredger.
"The multiple augers located in the arms provide great manoeuverability and replace the inefficient vacuum system found in the dredgers," he says.
Soil is removed through rotary motion of the blades and drawn into the head, where an auger conveys soil upwards into the hollow cylindrical arm. From there soil is similarly transported into the boom, passing through a flexible connecting tube made of architectural fabric. A conveyor at the base of the boom deposits the soil at its intended location. Hercules also features a detachable cabin that can be placed anywhere on site to operate the business end of the equipment remotely.
"It might be difficult to compete with existing excavators on initial purchase price given the radical departure from the current excavators," says Mc Elchar.
"However, I believe the fundamental excavation process could make it to a production model and do well in certain markets."
The Pangea Cal-X excavator won a Best Concept Award and was developed by Qing Ji, Chinnawat Chutimachalothorn, Tiago Cardoso, Joe Hughes, Ganesh Prabhu Thenrajan, Qixuan Wu, and Tianye Zhang.
The excavator builds on the concept of an oil pipe laying trencher, and is capable of precision digging in a wide variety of soils. Most of the novel action occurs underneath the hood. When excavating, small pads located between the cutters lift soil from the pit and dump it onto a covered conveyor belt. Soil can either be collected inside the vehicle, or ejected from the back side of the equipment.
Team member Thenrajan notes that the excavator was designed to maximize the efficiency and speed of the digging and dirt removal process.
"We also included a special retractable trencher arm," he says.
"When digging, the trencher arm expands from the machine and then retracts when the job is done so that the transportation of the equipment is easy. Our module tutor Clive Hilton was in direct communication with Ricardo, which helped in developing the design, particularly the human interface, weight compensation and how energy efficiency could be increased."
Could the Pangea Cal-X be produced as a working excavator?
"Given the money to build it, we are damn sure the Pangea excavator would function the same way as described," says Thenrajan.
"It would provide a breakthrough in the field of construction."
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