IEOR Blog Post #8

This week we changed our market to be public transport. Aiming specifically at buses because they are a common from of public transport in big cities. By implementing the flywheel system in buses we aim to capitalize on a unique market. In addition to this, by implementing the flywheel system in buses we will be making them more cost-efficient and energy efficient.

Last week in class we listed a couple of customers to contact. So far we have successfully gained an interview with AC Transit and Tesla. We will be contacting them next week. We are still waiting to hear back from customers such as Muni, Nissan, VTA, Toyota, etc.

IEOR Blog Post #7

This week Team Patent decided to finalize our patent for this class and we ultimately chose to work with the flywheel system. To better understand the product, we decided to meet with the Professor who designed the product a second time to better understand his vision for the flywheel. However this did not work out because he was not his office hours. Instead we will be following up with this next week.

The team believes that in order to find a niche for the flywheel product is it imperative that relook for unique markets to introduce the flywheel into. For example, certain companies in San Francisco offer Go-Kart tours of the city and we were consider the Go-Karts as a potential market we could capitalize on. Upon further research of Go-Kart tours, the team discovered that they are not unique to SF but rather offered all of over the world in places such as Barcelona and Vancouver. This means that there are thousands of tourists renting out these Go-Karts everyday and if the flywheel system was implemented in them we could make the Go-Karts more sustainable and energy-efficient.

IEOR Blog Post #6

Feedback on Group

Overall I think my group works well together. We are open to each other’s ideas and can have a constructive conversation about patents and products that we would like to build using these patents. Everyone is very helpful and very encouraging. As a team we decided to choose a patent that fit the health and fitness sector because it is a booming industry. However is it has been difficult trying to reach professors associated with this patent and we have started to look into patents in other industries. For example, last week in class we presented a flywheel patent which was very interesting. It's main purpose is to be implemented in cars to make them for efficient. I do not have a background in this though so it was not the most ideal patent. This past Monday, me and another teammate met with Askash to discuss potential options for where to go from here. He mentioned that if the patent had a publication along with it then we didn't necessarily need to go talk to the professors about their patent, rather the discussion with the professor was to get some more background information about the patent. The sweat patent we were interested in had a publication with it so it might not be necessary to go talk to the presser about it. However later that day, the main point of contact fro the sweat patent got back to my group and said because the sweat patent was already in the works for a startup it may not be the best option. He said he would talk to the people in charge of the start up and get back to us. If that does not work out we may decide to go with the MEMS Ultrasonic Imaging Patent. I am a little concerned that we may be a little behind in this class but I am hoping that as soon we hear back from our contact with the sweat patent we will have a more clear direction of what we would like to do going forward.  

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