W-PAD
A walking pad imitating natural soil, creating your own walking through the nature experience - wherever and whenever, improving your performance, focus and relaxation by increased bloodflow and physical activity. In addition, allowing people disabled from walking outdoors (such as the elderly, people who have sustained an injury, or incarcerated people) to extend their perceived living environment and experience life more fully.
Jorrit van der Werff
Tilburg University
IBA
Over het initiatief / About the initiative
W-PAD
In welke fase zit jouw initiatief? / In what stage is your initiative?
Ideefase
Heb je jouw initiatief al gevalideerd? / Did you validate your initiative?
The first stage of validation was succesfully finished. The second stage will consist of validating the first prototype imitating the natural soil.
Meer informatie over jouw initiatief / More info about your initiative
A walking pad with a surface imitating the soil in nature. It serves for walking at one place on a comfortable surface, balancing and walking uphill.
It contributes to workspace, rehabilitations, and daily casual life such as watching TV. Aditionally, it can be used by people that cannot go out due to illness or disabilities, or by prisoners with restricted freedom of movement.
We want to develop several lines of W-PAD in order to make it accessible and also feature-rich for demanding consumers.
Therefore, there are 4 lines we want to focus on:
1. Simple walking/ standing pad
2. W-PAD with an uphill and balancing option
3. All the options above plus any desired features from the customers in addition to the normal offer
4. W-PAD generating energy – hybrid – offering an option of collecting the energy in a form of a power bank
Besides, our aim is to make the W-PAD fully recyclable, including an incentive to collect defected used treadmills and use them of the parts.
Wat zijn jouw volgende stappen om het verder te ontwikkelen? / What are your next steps to develop the initiative?
Currently, we are developing the first prototype imitating the natural soil to validate the concept since throughout the first step of the validation we got feedback that the natural soil experience is hardly imaginable.
After validating the second stage – the natural soil surface, we will develop a pre-trial prototype looking into the next features such as the uphill slope, balancing features and combination of the W-PAD with a VR headset as well as incorporating other suggestions of the future users.
Afterwards, we will create several trial prototypes to test across our target industries including offices, rehabilitation centers and prisons.
The whole develpoment process is based on the feedback of the users to develop a product target to their needs. Considering the variety of our target industries, we do consider releasing several lines – versions – of W-PAD to increase its accessibility and relevancy.
The next stage of our focus is to make sure the W-PAD is fully recyclable and created from recycled or refurbished materials. Moreover, continuously, we want to develop it into an energy generating machine using the “walking energy” and storing it into a small powerbank.
Wat heb je nodig om (nog meer) impact te maken met dit initiatief? / What do you need to make (more) impact with this initiative?
- Validation: in order to make an impact, we have to make sure that our product is tailored to consumers’ needs.
- Network: knowing the right people in our target industries.
- Credibility within the innovation industry: prove our approach to the quality, intention to utilize R&D and create an easily transportable, concise, user-friendly walking pad.
- Following up on the point above, we need talented engineers to bring and implement new ideas.
