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 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 award announcement has been featured on a number of websites including Autoblog Green and Core 77:

Florida-based ROBRADY design has just racked up a GGDA for their Vectrix Electric Super Bike, a zero-emissions piece of bad-assery that also got nods from the people at Red Dot and IDEA.  -Core 77

The Green GOOD DESIGN™ award is a very specialized edition of the GOOD DESIGN™ program which emphasizes the importance of sustainable design by developing public awareness about companies that are doing the best job in sustainable design for world environments.  Green GOOD DESIGN™ 2009 recipients represent the world’s most important manufacturers and design firms and leading FORTUNE 500 corporations that are forwarding a new emphasis on a more sustainable design and environment worldwide.