The team at Ruth Lee have supplied a specialist manikin to HypED, a team of researchers at the University of Edinburgh, which will be used in the trials and testing of a new mode of high-speed, public transport called Hyperloop.
With trains between Edinburgh and London taking almost 5 hours, the Hyperloop concept aims to create a high-tech pod, which will allow passengers or cargo to travel at speeds of around 760mph – cutting the journey to just 40 minutes! The hyperloop is all-electric and will incorporate sustainable technology to provide an environmentally friendly mode of transport, not to mention opening up the UK allowing people and goods to move quickly around the country.
HypED (The University of Edinburgh Hyperloop Team) is a finalist in the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition II, which challenges students to design and manufacture a half-scale hyperloop pod to race. The team’s proposal has been successful, meaning they are now one of 24 teams competing in the event in California in August 2017
As Europe’s leading manufacturer of training manikins, our core business supplies training manikins to the emergency services, military and various rescue organisations such as the RNLI, as well as to the health care sector, but with more than 60 years’ experience, we have supplied manikins for an unusual and eclectic range of projects over the years! This includes supplying manikins to test where bodies will travel in shark infested waters in Brazil, for countless film productions such as Pan and Prometheus, and most recently for BBC’s Silent Witness Crime Drama.
The Working at Height manikin supplied to HypED will travel with the team to California to be the ‘passenger’ in their high-speed trials. It is a specialist manikin which has extra rigidity in the chest area so it does nto slump in harness and it is already being used in the team’s lab for a range of tests which allow them to perfect their pod and ultimately reach extremely high speeds.
Jack Noble, spokesperson for HypED said,
Ruth Lee’s manikin will be passenger #1 in our pod (which we have named “Poddy McPodface”) and will race inside SpaceX’s vacuum test track in Los Angeles, California this August. The importance of promoting the Hyperloop as a form of transport for people is key, and having a life size manikin inside our pod will help demonstrate this. The manikin has become very popular around the workshop, becoming the newest member of the team, and we can’t wait to see him race later this summer.
Paul McDonnell, Managing Director at Ruth Lee Ltd said,
After researching the HypED project, we were so impressed by their high-tech, high-speed aspirations that we agreed to sponsor the team by supplying one of our Working at Height manikins. We export our products around the world and so the idea of high-speed transportation is very exciting! The HypED team are an incredible group of young people with ground-breaking ideas and we are sure their tests in California will be outstanding!