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STILRIDE robotic folding technology receives International Award
STILRIDE’s clean energy-powered personal mobility devices are created using a flexible and sustainable production technology. The STILRIDE electric scooter, made from flat stainless-steel sheets, takes advantage of ancient origami techniques – folding paper to a 3D object – to open for complex designs by simply folding sheet into amazing 3D structures. By using industrial origami, there’s a reduction in parts needed and the ability to create sustainable products based on metal with unique shapes and forms.
The goal of STILRIDE has been to challenge the traditional view of manufacturing by using robotic industrial origami to create from a flat plate in accordance with the material’s properties and geometric nature. And, in this way, to create a safe, attractive and sustainable production and transport platform. There is the potential to create a new cost-effective value chain based on sheet metal materials, enabling manufacturers to design products at a significantly lower weight, with fewer components resulting in cost savings.
STILRIDE, which was started within the strategic innovation program Metallic materials, is now awarded a prize from the ISSF, International Stainless Steel Forum. STILRIDE is praised for LIGHT.FOLD, the new and innovative technology that the project uses in manufacturing. The technology may change the way we manufacture vehicles.
STILRIDE and Outokumpu have been awarded the Silver Award in the Best Technology Award category at the ISSF Awards 2021. In this category, the jury highlights original concepts that make significant contributions in either the stainless steel production methods or for the application of stainless steel in operation.
ISSF highlights that STILRIDE has successfully demonstrated an innovative way to process metallic sheet material into complex geometries that would be expensive to realize with traditional forming operations. It has the potential to create a new cost-effective value chain based on sheet metal materials. This enables manufacturers and mechanical engineering companies to design products at a significantly lower weight, with fewer components resulting in cost savings. The potential for the technology is huge when it comes to manufacturing in a more flexible way with metallic materials, especially for e-mobility and lightweight applications.
It was in 2019 that STILRIDE started, as an individual project, within the strategic innovation program Metallic materials. By the end of the project in 2020, the project had created a ready prototype for the electric scooter. STILRIDE received enormous and well-deserved attention in the motoring press worldwide, which, among other things, has resulted in a flood of expressions of interest for the scooter STILRIDE SUS1.
