The Wonder Washer

Part 1: Drawing key lessons

• This is a good example of how young students observe their daily experiences and identify a pain point which occurs commonly, thereafter to work on a simple and yet innovative solution.

Strengths:

• Quick enough for a basic clean

• Portable, can be easily deployed

• No buttons/dials required to operate, which has the merit of being contactless, especially in current times of pandemic

Areas for improvement:

• Current program will spin motor forward for 3x cycle within each 20s cleaning. Program can potentially be improved further by alternating between forward spin and reverse spin within the same duration of wash.

• From the demo video, there appears lack of proper method to secure the box down, especially during use when users are exerting sideward pressure from inserting their shoes. Perhaps an easy solution could be to include suction caps at the base, assuming the ground surface is smooth which allows the suction caps to work as intended.

• Suggest to consider using “traffic light” implementation consisting of LEDs to indicate the start 🡪 completion of each wash cycle. This may complement or even replace the sound alert, since there’re potential audible issues when system is deployed in noisy environment, or suitable for users with deafness disability.

Part 2: Exploring Possibilities

Current solutions to learn from:

• Typical washing machine are used, with taking the necessary precautions and some preparation needed.

• Smaller scale washing machines eg. for socks/baby clothings/delicates, which uses much lesser water and can be dedicated tool to wash shoes.

These available solutions are usually costly, cumbersome, and take a long time since it’s meant for a more thorough clean (45min~1h). However, some possible learning points include how to maximise the space efficiency by having more users in the same footprint, use of a laundry bag, drainage, and etc.

Areas to explore in the future:

• How to empty the waste/dirt in a simple manner? Can the waste water be drained easily and reuse for watering the field or plants?

• Since this is a portable and low power system and potentially to be deployed outdoors, can we harness clean energy to power the system? Eg. solar.

• Additional features but may compromise the complexity/size of the system – drying function.