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It’s time again for the Autodesk Manufacturing community to select the 2015 Inventor of the Year from among the dozen companies featured as 2015 monthly Autodesk Inventing the Future honorees. Voting has kicked off here.
For nearly a decade, Autodesk has identified the most innovative customers among hundreds of thousands of designers and engineers that create using Autodesk software. The honorees employ Autodesk software such as Autodesk Product Design Suite including Autodesk Inventor, Autodesk Factory Design Suite, the Autodesk Simulation family of products, Autodesk PLM 360 and Autodesk Fusion 360.
The Inventing of the Future honoree with the highest number of votes will receive the Inventor of the Year honor. Voting is under way and closes February 10 at 5 p.m. Pacific time.
The Contenders: 2015 Inventing the Future Honorees
Dec.: Bright Agrotech is helping spearhead a movement in the food industry through a process it calls vertical farming. Based in Laramie, WY, the company uses Autodesk Fusion 360 to develop its ZipFarm product, a complete indoor vertical farming solution for commercial farmers growing in urban areas or harsh climates. ZipFarms enable very productive, high-density vertical farming without any soil, reducing farming costs and waste while improving quality of life and increasing transparency throughout the entire farming process.
Nov.: Olicrom Sportechnology, based in Italy and founded by Eliseo Falcone, has a passion for developing fitness equipment. Today, Olicrom’s products range from the CableQuad advanced training platform for multifunctional strength training activities to the PhysioSub, an underwater workout chamber for deep-sea divers. The team at Olicrom leverages Autodesk Inventor and other software tools included in the Autodesk Product Design Suite to complete their designs.
Oct.: Flair has developed a connected home climate control that saves customers money. Flair’s smart vent and microthermostat sends data to the cloud and integrates with Nest and other smart thermostats. The San Francisco Bay Area-based company used Autodesk Fusion 360 to develop its products that are expected to be available early this year in U.S. home improvement stores.
Sept.: Ford Motor Company and its immersive Vehicle Environment (FiVE) Lab led by Elizabeth Baron virtually tests thousands of product design details under simulated conditions. The Lab offers Ford’s global team of designers and engineers the opportunity to collaborate on those products in real-time — all with an eye on improving products and the customer experience. The virtual environment in Ford’s FiVE Lab is enabled, in part, by Autodesk VRED 3D visualization software.
Aug.: Club W bills itself as the world’s only personalized wine club where its members can receive a curated selection of wines developed exclusively for Club W by noteworthy winemakers. Club W has leveraged Autodesk PLM 360 software as the foundation for its product team to work error free in a collaborative environment, which in turn has helped the company grow its product sourcing more than 900 percent in one year.
July: Vantage Power has developed a retrofit hybrid powertrain for diesel buses, an integral part of the transportation backbone for cities worldwide, to help reduce emissions and cut fuel costs. The London-based company leverages Autodesk Product Design Suite, featuring Autodesk Inventor, to develop the B320 System. The self-contained hybrid powertrain retrofits into existing bus models and reduces fuel consumption and emissions more than 40 percent.
June: FreeWire Technologies envisions a world equipped with a large-scale electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure, and the San Francisco Bay Area-based company is developing solutions to make that vision a reality. FreeWire’s first product, the Mobi Charger, is a mobile EV charging solution that uses onboard batteries to create networks of grid-smart EV chargers. The Mobi is developed with software including Autodesk Fusion 360.
May: Wearality spent years developing patented world-class VR technologies at Lockheed Martin for the defense and aerospace industry. Now Wearality is translating this cutting-edge and patented technology into consumer and commercial wearable displays that are light, portable and affordable—including its Wearality Sky device, which represents the next-generation of VR wearables. Wearality develops its displays using Autodesk Fusion 360.
April: HoneyPoint3D provides immersive 3D printing education workshops for anyone with an interest in the 3D printing craft. Started by wife-and-husband duo, Liza Wallach-Kloski and Nick Kloski, the company offers online training videos, live events and publications for adults, students and corporate gatherings all centered on 3D CAD modeling. Autodesk Fusion 360 and Autodesk Tinkercad are among the tools that HoneyPoint3D uses to instruct its customers.
March: Swedish jewelry brand Lumitoro, founded by Roberto Chaves, is one of the first in the world to produce jewelry exclusively through 3D printing. By combining stylish geometric, aesthetic and cutting-edge 3D design via the use of Autodesk Fusion 360 and 3D printing technology, the Lumitoro team creates delicate jewelry in high quality materials such as silver, raw bronze, stainless steel, nylon and, upon request, gold.
February: ReDeTec based in Toronto envisions a world where makers can create and develop in a sustainable fashion. ReDeTec’s first product, the ProtoCycler, allows users to recycle waste plastic from 3D printing into valuable new 3D printer filament. The ProtoCycler comes complete with a built-in grinder, distributed spooling and intelligent computer control. The ReDeTec used Autodesk Fusion 360, Inventor and PLM 360 software to develop the Protocycler.
January: PROTON, Malaysia’s largest manufacturer of automobiles, saves up to 65 percent in production time and costs by leveraging Autodesk software. PROTON designed all of its recent car models using Autodesk tools including Autodesk Product Design Suite and Autodesk Alias Automotive for workflows that include product design, design optimization, simulation and manufacturing engineering.
