Smartphones are an integral part of our day to day lives but every now and then we tend to drop them. We all use the best mobile screen protectors to protect the display and the mobile covers to protect the body of our smartphone. Despite all our best efforts rarely do we manage to keep our phones safe.
There might be some good news for all of us, as reported in The Verge, a German engineering student by the name of Philip Frenzel of Aalen University has create a mobile airbag that could protect the phones from being smashed to pieces when dropped. The case has retractable metal prongs attached to it which gets deployed when the phone is dropped, thereby saving it from any damage.
The case has four metal prongs that are deployed when the phone is in free fall, there are sensors that can detect the free fall of the phone and the information is used to deploy the metal prongs when the free fall is detected. After the phone has safely fallen on its four legs, we can pick it up to push the prongs inside the case so that they are not out all the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLoEcgAaRpI
Frenzel has received an award from the German Mechatronics Society for his mobile airbag and he and his friend Peter Mayer from the same university plan to raise funds on Kickstarter for his mobile airbag. This invention is going to save a lot of money and stress for the smartphone users who tend to break their phones a lot. Even with the metal prongs attached, the mobile case is not at all bulky which makes it usable for the users.
The mobile airbag by Frenzel is also called ADcase, where AD means “Active Damping”. There is still some work to be done before Frenzel and his team can start launching the product as there might be some improvements and changes that need to be made for the final product.