Dyson Award winner sees the forest for the trees

Dyson Award winner sees the forest for the trees

The New Zealand winner of the James Dyson Award is 22-year-old industrial designer Tim Cox, whose Tretech Forestry Systems took first place. Cox's day job is designing rock-crushing equipment, but his family has 25 years of experience in the forestry industry, which he drew upon for his winning design.

'New Zealand's forest industry relies on old technology to measure forest woodlots prior to felling. Current products are expensive and require multiple tools for a single job. My product, Tretech has been developed to eliminate double handling of data to reduce time, costs and human error.'

'It consists of three tools--the handheld hammer anchors into a tree, an ultrasound transponder measures diameter, quality, density of the wood, and this transmits to a handheld receiver, which measures the height of the tree. The system incorporates other technology like GPS and a camera to record the tree's location,' says the designer.

Said judge and designer David Lovegrove, 'In the three years I've been judging this Award, I have never seen a product that is so well resolved, thoroughly researched and so well thought-through. From a design and manufacturing perspective, this resonates well with Dyson's design philosophy.'

As part of his prize, Cox will now get to travel to the UK (with a $3,000 expense account!) where he will tour Dyson's Research, Design & Development facility.

(Via Core77.)