O-Wind Turbine wins James Dyson Award

Two students from the Lancaster University in the UK discovered a way to harness urban wind by inventing a new type of wind turbine. And this project is what won Chilean Nicolas Orellana and Kenyan Yaseen Noorani this year’s James Dyson Award. The two students taking up International Innovation MSc together invented the O-Wind Turbine. Instead of capturing wind travelling in one direction—which traditional turbines do—their invention has a geometric shape capable of generating wind, no matter which way the wind is blowing. The O-Wind Turbine was inspired by the NASA Mars Tumbleweed Rover and features a 25cm sphere with geometric vents. It sits on a fixed axis but spins when wind hits it from any direction. Gears drive the generator and these convert the wind power into electricity. Orellana and Noorani take home $50,000 for their project and another $8,500 for their university department.

In a press release about the win, Sir James Dyson said, “Design something that solves a problem is an intentionally broad brief. It invites talented, young inventors to do more than just identify real problems. It empowers them to use their ingenuity to develop inventive solutions. O-Wind Turbine does exactly that. It takes the enormous challenge of producing renewable energy and using geometry, it can harness energy in places where we’ve scarcely been looking—cities. It’s an ingenious concept.”

James Dyson Award is now accepting entries

Dyson’s international design award, the James Dyson Award, is now accepting entries that will follow the brief “design something which solves a problem, big or small.” The winner of the competition doesn’t just gain international exposure but also $50,000 to develop the idea. Last year’s winner was a team from McMaster University who worked on a low-cost, early detection melanoma skin cancer device called The sKan. If you’re an young designer or engineer who’s still in school or just graduated and have an idea you want to pitch, you can read more about the contest after the jump.

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Dyson gets into electric car business

Heathcliff O’Malley

Dyson’s latest project might seem a bit outside its wheelhouse but when you think about it, the technology company has always been in the business of cleaning our air of pollutants. And so the company is turning its sights to electric vehicles as announced by James Dyson, the company’s founder and chief engineer. Dyson is set to unveil a battery-powered electric vehicle by the year 2020. It’s supposedly going to be a “radical and different” type of car.

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Q&A with Dyson's Paul Dawson on the new Dyson Pure Hot+Cool Link

The Dyson Pure Hot+Cool Link builds upon our previous models by adding a third functionality – air purification. The machine captures gases and traps allergens and pollutants in the air in our patented 360° HEPA Filter - Paul Dawson

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Dyson is world-famous for innovation in engineering and product design. At the core of the company are a lot of smart people aiming to solve very hard problems. The company is already the leading name in vacuum technologies and products, it has recently made an impact in household robotics with the Dyson 360 Eye and now it has taken its popular Dyson Hot + Cool line of fans/heaters and added a class-leading air purifier that filters impurities and allergens in the air while it provide the heating and cooling function.

We spoke to Dyson's Paul Dawson, whis is Global Product Development Director, Environmental Control to find out more about the importance of air purification and how the Dyson Pure Hot+Cool Link reduces indoor pollutants.

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