Personal Space Protective Enclosure Using Gravity-Return Strips
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current protective measures against airborne pathogens, such as face masks, are ineffective or impractical for daily activities like eating or drinking, and comprehensive protection methods like 'space' suits are bulky and limit social interaction, while there is a need for a device that allows face-to-face interaction while maintaining protection against droplet infections.
Innovation Solution
A personal space protective enclosure comprising a strip-mounting frame with vertically-hanging strips that create an enclosed space, allowing individuals to see each other's faces while preventing airborne pathogens, with the strips designed to return to their resting position by gravity, enabling easy access and mobility.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Object-affected harmful factors
If face masks are worn for protection against airborne pathogens, then protection against inhalation of pathogens is improved, but ability to see one another's faces and engage in social interaction deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The enclosure is divided into multiple vertical strips that can be independently positioned. These strips create protective barriers while leaving gaps between them that allow visual communication and facial expressions to be seen, thus maintaining social interaction capability while providing pathogen protection.
Solution Approach 2:
The vertical strips are strategically positioned to provide protection at specific locations where pathogen exposure risk is highest (around the face and breathing zone), while leaving other areas more open for visual interaction. This localized protection approach maintains both safety and social connectivity.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If comprehensive protection like 'space' suits is used, then protection against transmissible disease is improved, but mobility and ability to interact with surrounding environment deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The vertical strips are designed to be movable rather than fixed, allowing them to be dynamically repositioned as needed. This enables users to open the enclosure when interaction with the surrounding environment is required and close it when protection is needed, providing flexibility and ease of operation.
Solution Approach 2:
The vertical strips act as intermediary elements between the user and the external environment. They can be positioned to allow selective interaction - permitting hand movements, object transfers, and visual communication while maintaining protection, thus mediating between the need for safety and the need for environmental interaction.
3Object-affected harmful factors
If vertically-hanging strips are used to create enclosed space, then protection against airborne pathogens is improved, but accessibility to surrounding space deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The vertical strips are designed with the ability to move freely along the frame structure. When accessibility is needed, the strips can be pushed aside or repositioned, allowing easy access to the surrounding space. When protection is needed, they return to their vertical hanging position, creating an enclosed protective barrier.
Solution Approach 2:
The strips are positioned and configured to automatically return to their protective vertical position after being moved aside for access. This self-returning mechanism ensures that protection is restored without requiring active intervention, maintaining both accessibility when needed and continuous protection when not in use.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The enclosure effectively prevents airborne pathogen transmission, allowing individuals to interact without masks or social distancing, while maintaining protection and enabling access to external spaces, such as shopping or dining, with the option for additional air sanitization and oxygen supply.
Implementation Method 1
each vertically-hanging strip will resume the resting position by force of gravity after having been disturbed
Data Source
AI summary
A personal space protective enclosure defines an enclosed space that protects individuals within the enclosed space from infection by airborne pathogens. A plurality of vertically-hanging strips hang on hooks on a strip-mounting frame that is supported by a vertical support stanchion, or a plurality thereof. The hooks each have a rectangular cross-section defining and a straight upper surface when viewed in one direction and a curvilinear cross-section when viewed in another direction. The vertically-hanging strips each define an opening that has an upper straight edge that is contiguous with the straight upper surface of the hooks when hanging in resting position, and which return to the resting position after being disturbed from the resting position, such as by an individual reaching between the vertically-hanging strips.