Thursday, October 1, 2015

The All Autonomous Universal Urinal System (Or Robotic Bathrroms where you need them)

One of the many challenges of visiting the fair city of Boston is a lack of public toilets.  This can also be true for major festivals or outdoor sporting events, getting the toilets to the people. Proper sanitation is critical to the operation of modern society, but it is one of those background issues that plays number 2 to many other infrastructure needs that seem more immediate.  This changes as soon as you get below critical toilet in a given area, if an event or space does not have enough places to go the bathroom for a set number of people, things will get gross.  Currently traditional port-a-potties provide a means to supply a space with sufficient bathroom facilities, this is great for events where you have relatively static needs on facilities, but what if the need for restrooms is dynamic?  For that I suggest developing the "All Autonomous Universal Urination Solution"  (I'm not married to the name) an autonomous vehicle designed to bring the bathroom to where its needed and bring itself in for maintenance at the end of its work day.  Imagine a series of autonomous platforms that drive around a city, following population flows, when a shopping district is filled with busy shoppers, the toilets are there, when the evening transitions from clothes buying to getting slizzerd (sp?) the toilets move to the locations of the bars.  These autonomous robots ensure that people have a safe and sanitary space to do their business.  This combined with their ability to follow the needs of users means that we have less infrastructure needlessly built up in an area.  Even better these mobile bathrooms could be designed to dock with autonomous vehicles, now your road trip car doesn't need a bathroom and you don't have to wait for a rest stop to take care of business.  The fuel savings of not having to stop should make this idea a valid contribution to the travel scene of autonomous vehicles (no it wouldn't but I am trying to play up the design firms vibe of an over promised solution)  These autonomous bathrooms could range in size from single person portable bathrooms to fully furnished restrooms moving from site to site.

Now how would we pay for this system?  Civil authorities would be unlikely to put up the cash, for this I keep it simple.  Pay-per-poo, each person will be required to pay to access the unit.  Additionally to ensure maximum use of the toilets, there would be the 2A2U app, which would allow users to find an available toilet, check wait times, and pre-pay for the usage.  If the system finds that more people in an area are looking for toilets, the units would move to accommodate.

The TL:DR version port-a-potties designed to be moved by some kind of autonomous mover system, designed to work with smart software to ensure that they are utilized as much as possible.

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