CLIENT CASE

Guardamate robot keeps the parking safe

Guardamate is an AI-based security robot for parking lots (produced by the Canadian startup, Tellext). The robot is programmed to patrol 24/7 at both indoor and outdoor parking lots and brings peace of mind to the premise owners. With the experience of MERPHI’s robotics design team, our mission was to create concepts for the interactions and appearance of Guardamate.

Client

Tellext inc./ Guardamate

Year

2021-2022

Deliverables

Concept Development, Industrial Design, UX

Challenge

Should Guardamate look friendly or intimidating? This was the main challenge when designing the appearance of this advanced surveillance robot. We wanted it to appear friendly to drivers and passengers, but it also needed to be perceived as a credible threat to vandalists and robbers. Creating a design suitable for both of these interactions poised a unique problem.

Solution

We began by studying the technology and the users, both the drivers and the offenders, with the help of Industrial design students from Chalmers university*. To overcome the challenge of the appearance of the robot, we designed one side of the robot to look friendly and the other side to come across as intimidating to offenders. We created several concepts, performed CMF analysis, and worked in close collaboration with the engineering team at Tellext to create a realizable final concept, using DFM and CAD.

Tellext parking robot with red background
3 color variants of Tellext parking robot

We designed one side of the robot to appear friendly and the other side to look intimidating to the offenders.

Tellext robot wheel base
Tellext parking robot view on the camera module

Our mission did not stop at appearance and interaction design. We also provided the client with creative solutions on functionalities and mechanisms.

Tellext Parking robot exploded view

From concept to CAD, we worked in close collaboration with Tellext throughout the entire process.

*Acknowledgment

We would like to express our special thanks to the students and teacher from Chalmers University of Technology who helped bring this project to life. They did a thorough background study and analysis for this project as a part of their Master’s project work.
Teacher: Bijan Aryana (Senior Lecturer at the division of Design & Human Factors, Department of Industrial and Materials Science.)
Masters Students: Jinhong Guo – Cedrik Sjöblom – Melina Kazemi – Filip Sperr – Fredrik Longnell – Erik Halldin – Elis Minborg – Amirreza Aghaei – Johanna Bergfelt Ramos De Souza

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