Unappreciated by the world is the fact that in today’s elusive studio of motorcycle design America is a major player – for some, the major player. Dozens of designers, engineers and craftsmen are creating some of the most exciting and innovative motorcycles the world has ever seen – ever dreamed about. This doesn’t just mean “yet another chopper”. It means names like Confederate, Ecosse, Fischer, Roehr, Vectrix (producing an electric sportbike), and MotoCzysz in addition to, and no less worthy in this context, the establishment Harley-Davidson with Buell, Victory, and even Indian. Award-winning author Alan Cathcart visits twenty-five shops interviews the designers and engineers and rides the motorcycles. Each shop, interviewee and motorcycle has been photographed especially for this book.

Check out the following excerpt from the book featuring the rMoto Electrix Superbike. You can also download a PDF file here. To purchase a copy of American Dream Bikes by Alan Cathcart click here.

The Rescue Wizard is a gas-powered, man-portable winch capable of pulling loads as heavy as 12,000 lbs. (5,443.108kg). Designed for simple operation under the hardest circumstances, the winch can be used where destroyed roads and tight fits make heavy machinery and vehicles unfeasible and when electric power is unreliable, impractical (e.g. in or near water) or even nonexistent. As such, the winch is ideal for emergency rescue workers, forestry personnel, road crews and the military. With the Rescue Wizard, ROBRADY has surpassed the concept profile, leveraging mechanical and industrial design expertise to realize Morrison’s vision for a life-saving device with great commercial appeal. Aside from obvious rescue applications, the Rescue Wizard could be indispensable for road crews, the forestry service, the military and outdoorsmen as well.

The International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA®) competition is a celebration of the year’s most inventive and creative product and product concept designs. Of the entries submitted, the judges recognize Finalist, Bronze, Silver and Gold Awards. This year the competition received the most entries since it began 30 years ago. Out of 407 finalists, 38 were honored with the Gold award; while 64 received the Silver award and 88 won the Bronze award. IDSA has partnered with the Henry Ford in Dearborn and all finalists from this year will go into the permanent collection of the museum.

Andy Morrison of Naples, Florida founded Wizard Machines in 2008. Morrison has had the idea for the Rescue Wizard for the past 25 years. Over the years, with every disaster, Mr. Morrison thought about that ideal machine but the technology did not exist to achieve the needs he envisioned for a reliable machine that was light and durable in nature. Finally, in 2008 he became aware of a new rope that had all of the attributes of steel cable, but with 10% of the weight.  At about the same time there was a devastating earthquake in Sichuan, China that collapsed as many as 600,000 structures in a matter of seconds.  Those two events motivated him to begin a search for a firm that shared his vision.  That culminated in his collaboration with ROBRADY Design, of Sarasota, Florida, and the founding of Wizard Machines. Morrison has invested the last two years and substantial personal funds to bring the dream for the Rescue Wizard to reality.

ROBRADY is well known for their design prowess in the electric scooter and super bike world, but this is their first foray into the electric bicycle market. Fritz Maffry of the Dynamo Group, who is currently reviewing the db0 3.0 for North American distribution, sees the bike as a breakthrough, with the “same caliber of design DNA as products from Apple or Sony”. Maffry has been reviewing the bike and commented that “a crowd gathered when we were on our test drives” and feels that ROBRADY and DK City succeeded in elevating the design game in electric bicycle market. The Dynamo Group, which specializes in commercializing breakthrough light electric products, is keeping an eye out for future collaborations of ROBRADY and DK City – as Maffry states: “Can’t wait to see what they have coming next”.

ROBRADY has several interactive displays planned for their booth this year. In addition to the db0 folding bicycle, they will be featuring their XTools floating fishing equipment, Identity Stronghold Secure Sleeves, and the Vectrix VX-1 Maxi Scooter. They will be reaching out to technology companies to offer design, production and capital solutions. Dickie Herbst, Director of New Ventures for ROBRADY, will be available Friday morning at the booth and is looking forward to meeting with technology groups in the Tampa Bay area. Matt Leiter, Director of ROBRADY capital, will be available Friday afternoon as well.

CoolTECH, hosted by the Tampa Bay Technology Forum, is annual event featuring a display of interactive experiences designed to showcase the coolest technology coming out of the Tampa Bay region and beyond. Attendees check out cutting edge technology, gain insight from industry leaders and take part in interactive voting for the coolTECH Awards. The event attracts hundreds of attendees from the technology and business community and has something for everyone including industry leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, researchers and students. CoolTECH 2010 will take place June 4 at MOSI in Tampa.

ROBRADY design is a multi-disciplined product design and development studio that offers its multinational client base—including General Electric, Mercedes-Benz, Dell Computers, Parker Hannifin, AT&T, Merial and Volvo Penta—progressive industrial design, mechanical design and engineering, graphics /packaging / GUI / web and eCommerce design, market research, brand and retail development, complete rapid prototyping and production program management. ROBRADY design stresses comprehensive speed-to-market product solutions by collaborating to identify the greatest areas of opportunity and producing innovative designs to deliver profitable product solutions. ROBRADY delivers design, production and capital solutions to their clients in support of their research to reality philosophy.

ROBRADY has teamed with Xhale on many projects since 2007, and worked closely with them on the design, ergonomics and engineering requirements of the HyGreen™ System. ROBRADY CEO / Design Director Robert Brady feels the complimentary partnership the two companies share will continue to yield many profitable products: “Xhale Innovations’ appreciation and understanding of the importance of design working in unison with technology drives their success in product development. ROBRADY will continue to strive in positioning Xhale as a source for highly desired market-leading medical products.”

“Choosing ROBRADY has been one of the best decisions we’ve made,” says Xhale CEO Richard Allen. “We wanted a highly innovative design that would be readily brand-identifiable, but also wanted a product the customer/user would find to be completely intuitive and easy to use. ROBRADY delivered in every way. They did an outstanding job of helping us with ideation, and integrated the design concepts with customer-driven ergonomics and our unique engineering requirements.”

The 2010 Medical Design Excellence Award winners will be honored during the Medical Design & Manufacturing (MD&M) East Conference and Exposition, June 9 at New York City’s Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.

Canon Communications LLC organizes the MDEA award competition, the only awards program that exclusively recognizes contributions and advances in medical product design. Entries are evaluated on design and engineering features, including innovative use of materials, user-related functions that improve healthcare delivery and change traditional medical attitudes or practices, features that provide enhanced patient benefit and the ability of the product development team to overcome design and engineering challenges to meet the product’s clinical objectives.

Xhale Innovations, Inc. is a subsidiary of Xhale, Inc. Xhale was formed in 2005 following six years of research and intellectual property development at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Xhale is funded by private equity investment, and has been awarded two NIH SBIR Phase I grants and one NIH SBIR Phase II grant. The company’s corporate operations are headquartered in Gainesville, Florida, near the University of Florida campus, and the company’s production and engineering facilities are located in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

ROBRADY design is a multi-disciplined product design and development studio that offers its multinational client base—including General Electric, Mercedes-Benz, Dell Computers, Parker Hannifin, AT&T, Merial and Volvo Penta—progressive industrial design, mechanical design and engineering, graphics/packaging/GUI/web and eCommerce design, market research, brand and retail development, complete rapid prototyping and production program management. ROBRADY design stresses comprehensive speed-to-market product solutions by collaborating to identify the greatest areas of opportunity and producing innovative designs to deliver profitable product solutions. ROBRADY delivers design, production and capital solutions to their clients in support of their research to reality philosophy.

UPDATE: The HyGreen™ system has been featured on Fox News. click here to check out the story.

The db0 3.0 received unanimous praise from the audience, who were impressed by its sleek designer appearance, eco-friendly message, and “humanized power”. The event also highlighted DK City’s relationship with ROBRADY by showcasing videos that introduced its studio and team. In early 2009, DK City had sought out ROBRADY design after seeing their award-winning work on the eco-friendly electric Vectrix VX-1 Maxi Scooter and Super Bike, as well as their work with designing many products for Segway. The two companies partnered in August 2009 to design, develop and manufacture the db0 folding bike line. The db0 3.0 has garnered international design recognition with the receipt of the gold Spark award in October of this year. Photos and video of the launch party can be seen on ROBRADY’s Facebook page.

To my surprise, not only have his design parameters changed, but also his business models, which I found to be far more revolutionary. ROBRADY has always provided end-to-end services of design, documentation, prototyping, sourcing and shipping, but in the hyper competitive product development world, he has added a new service option. For those customers (typically in the emerging markets) not comfortable with standard design service fees, ROBRADY alternatively offers exclusive partnering deals that lower up front costs and shares program risks – specifically, licensing the targeted design itself.  It’s a way of moving the majority of fees from the front of the project to the back where revenue can come into play. The customer pays only for the designed components they consume in their production, allowing them a less expensive entry into the marketplace, while gaining access to cutting edge design services that they know they will need to be competitive on a global basis.

As we have seen, the emerging markets, most notably India and China, offer challenges to standard business models, forcing every customer / vendor in every industry to adapt. ROBRADY has met that challenge with an innovative new business model.

To see the amazing vehicles and products ROBRADY has designed, check out their website here.

Syndicated From: All Cars Electric

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The HyGreen™ system is designed to provide the first line of defense in the control of healthcare associated infections (HAIs). The system is comprised of a wall mounted unit, a bed mounted monitor, and badges worn by the medical staff. After cleaning their hands with an alcohol-based sanitizer, a medical staff member would place them under the wall unit sensor which ‘sniffs’ for alcohol. The unit then sends a wireless “all clean” message to the badge on the staff member’s pocket. The monitor on the patient’s bed searches for the “all clean” message. If it is not present, the badge vibrates to remind the staff member to sanitize their hands.  The system actively reminds busy healthcare workers to wash their hands and records all hand washing events and patient-staff interactions in the hospital environment, giving hospitals the first comprehensive and definitive tool to effectively monitor adherence to hand hygiene protocols.

Xhale Innovations, Inc. is a subsidiary of Xhale, Inc. Xhale was formed in 2005 following six years of research and intellectual property development at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Xhale is funded by private equity investment, and has been awarded two NIH SBIR Phase I grants and one NIH SBIR Phase II grant. The company’s corporate operations are headquartered in Gainesville, Florida, near the University of Florida campus, and the company’s production and engineering facilities are located in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

ROBRADY design is a multi-disciplined product design and development studio that offers its multinational client base—including General Electric, Mercedes-Benz, Dell Computers, Parker Hannifin, AT&T, Merial and Volvo Penta—progressive industrial design, mechanical design and engineering, graphics /packaging / GUI / web and eCommerce design, market research, brand and retail development, complete rapid prototyping and production program management. ROBRADY design stresses comprehensive speed-to-market product solutions by collaborating to identify the greatest areas of opportunity and producing innovative designs to deliver profitable product solutions. ROBRADY delivers design, production and capital solutions to their clients in support of their research to reality philosophy.

The new db0 bike, which is scheduled for release to the market in the first quarter of 2010, is first in a series of electric bikes that embodies their mission to design a series of clean, bold, and innovatively simple folding bikes. The design promotes the folding mechanism unlike it has ever been done before in this market – as a “focal point” that adds visual value to the bike. The battery configuration and integrated travel handles are also treated as iconic elements that offer aesthetic as well as ergonomic benefits. The db0 bike design is currently being featured at the Autodesk Design Gallery in San Francisco, CA as part of the Spark Awards show.

While ROBRADY is well known for their design prowess in the electric scooter and super bike world, this is their first foray into the electric bicycle market. ROBRADY’s CEO / Design Director Robert Brady said his team “took a white page look” at the opportunity and set out to design a series of bikes that would be instantly recognized as the next generation in folding bikes:

“The three new db0 bikes embody our mission to design a series of clean, bold, and innovatively simple folding bikes. Our design work promotes the folding mechanism as an integrated piece of the design- a ‘focal point’ that adds visual value to the bike design unlike it has ever been done before. We don’t hide the fact that these bikes fold- we have made it a distinguished characteristic of the series”

Several features of the bike are currently in patent process. DK City, who will be the exclusive manufacturers of the bicycle series, is also taking a fresh approach to the build, incorporating unique manufacturing processes that will deliver a bicycle of superior craftsmanship. The partnership is planning several future projects beyond this series of bicycles.

DK City Corporation was founded in 1987 and is headquartered in Taichung, Taiwan with an additional facility in Shanghai, China.  They employ 1500 people and have an annual sales volume of US $400 million. They are committed to innovating, designing and manufacturing technologically advanced and environmentally friendly products. Known for their sophisticated fitness equipment, massage chairs, and recreational electric scooters and golf carts, DK City has recently expanded into the pollution-free electrical bicycle and motorcycle market. This expansion is driven by their desire to protect and preserve the planet for future generations.