SEAGUARD

Smart Divers Float

Project Type

Main course - Safesea

Year

2021

Territory

Scuba Diving

Duration

3 Months

Anchor 1

SEAGUARD is a smart divers float designed in order to reduce and prevent accidents of boats and divers.

Its motivation is to create a more efficient communication between boats above diving sites and the scuba divers by combining lightings systems and EPIRB for SOS signals.

Research - locating opportunities

The research in this project relays more on interviews than on observations because of the COVID-19 restrictions.

The interviews was made by Zoom calls while focus on problems can revealed during Scuba diving.

A lot of subjects came up during questioning but 2 of them brought up several times because of their great impact on diving accidents:

01 Importance of communication 02 complexity - multiple equipment

Ilan Berkowitch

Owner of scuba diving club "DeepSeam"

Specialized in complex diving systems:

O2, underwater vehicles, extraction and rescue

* Represents professional opinion in this study

“In addition to lighting your way underwater at night, a dive light is also necessary for communication. It is used to illuminate standard diver hand signals and to make light signals.”

“A dive light is as much a part of your scuba equipment as your buoyancy compensator (BC) and regulator. And every piece of equipment requires diligent care and maintenance to function reliably for an extended period.” - By Linda Lee Walden

Opportunities - project goals

Alpha flag

EPIRB

Flashlight

Renew the existing equipment
Combine the divers float with 2 lighting systems and Empirb
Make a new communication system between divers and boats
Integrate a flash light in the bottom of the float to lit the environment and signal the location of the boat to the scuba divers
Allow divers to transmit a distress signal before reaching the surface
Syncing with existing dive watches or additional remote
Target the equipment rental companies and not the divers

Ideation - configurations and shaping

The ideation stage collects of the goals and needs brought up in research and conclusions stage and using sketching to embody and bring them together and creates its shape.

After finding the right configurations which contains: Handle, Body, legs and Lights, the next stage was to translate the sketches to 3D structure.

CMF- Color, Material and finish choices

The purpose of a divers float is to be visible to boats in environments such as seas and oceans, therefor the use of Orange make it stands out (complementary color - Orange over Blue) and give alert on divers position.

The use of glossy surface for the body fits to wet environments and its reflectiveness allow it to be more visible during day and night.

The handle integrated with texture which provides a better grip to the user.

Different combinations of color arrange allows the diving clubs as the target audience to choose their unique appearance with combination of their logos or trademarks.