Specialists from the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen have developed protective equipment that will increase the safety of people at hazardous workplaces. It is a solar-powered warning safety vest, gloves with integrated light and footwear that protects against so-called step voltage.
The warning vest with active lighting is not at first glance different from the normal one. The fundamental difference is that the vest is equipped with an active line lighting system with four LEDs as light sources.
"Line light is better visible in the dark than the spotlight. Our main benefit is, above all, flexible photovoltaic panels, located on the back of the vest, which recharges the battery for supplying the lighting system," explains Radek Soukup from the Regional Innovation Center of Electrical Engineering (RICE) at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen.
They collaborated with Applycon and Holík International to develop protective gear.
The battery, which is in the breast pocket and is removable, will keep the vest out of sunlight for about twenty hours.
An important safety feature is also an emergency alarm. The danger can be alerted by pressing a button on the control unit in the vest pocket. The emergency state is then signaled by a flashing light, which is useful, for example, in noisy operations.
"Ensuring security with active lighting is a global trend nowadays and is being dealt with by major global companies," says Milan Baxa, Applycon CEO.
According to the configuration, the price of the vest should range from one to two thousand crowns. It should come to the market this year.
Another piece of equipment from the Pilsen developers workshop is integrated lighting gloves.
"We expect them to be widely used in the automotive industry, for example. In many cases, a worker at work must have both hands free, but at the same time, he needs to shine. Thanks to the LEDs integrated into the gloves, this problem is avoided," explains Radek Soukup.
The third aid that RICE researchers have helped to develop is the footwear boots.
"Shoes can alert the worker to the occurrence of a dangerous phenomenon that arises around the ground from fallen high-voltage wires or, for example, when lightning strikes. When walking toward a dangerous point, dangerous tensions occur between the legs touching the ground at the same time. According to the standard, a value of 50 volts per meter is permissible for humans. Shoes are able to evaluate its exceeding and acoustically and visually give the user a signal that they must move away from a dangerous source," says Soukup.
The electrodes that detect the step voltage are located on the sole and connected to the evaluation electronics located on the tongue of the shoe.
"At this point, we have a prototype. Now we have another step to make more samples that will be tested and verified in real life," concludes Tomáš Pekař from Holík International.
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