The hi-tech bench that will charge your phone
NOW there’s a bright idea: Scots will soon be able to charge their phones in the street thanks to a plan to install solar powered benches.
Aberdeen will become the first city in the UK to host ‘Soofas’ when three are installed at the end of the month.
However, given that the seats will be found in one of the country’s most northerly cities, there could be fears over a lack of sunlight.
The design, developed at America’s crack MIT university in Boston, has a solar panelled section on top and USB sockets capable of charging a mobile or a laptop.
Approved by former US President Barack Obama during their US launch in 2014, Soofas are now being brought to the Granite City.
The aim is to help improve safety for students, who may be caught out late at night when their phone batteries have run down. According to Edward Krafcik of Soofas each bench needs three to four hours of sunlight per day to operate.
But with just 54.6 hours of sunlight on average in November, and just 36 hours in December, according to the Met Office, Aberdeen is one of Britain’s dullest cities.
Installation of the Soofas, led by students from Robert Gordon University (RGU) and the University of Aberdeen, comes after a ten-week effort to bring them over from America following a competition through Aberdeen City Council’s ‘CityLab’ scheme, which aims to improve the city with innovative ideas.
Jon Pengelly, head of postgraduate studies at RGU’s Gray’s School of Art, said: ‘The aim of CityLab is to transform and innovate Aberdeen by initiating and supporting student-led solutions for citywide change.’
The students’ proposal for the benches was inspired by trying to help people who are separated from friends when their phones have run out of battery.
Exact locations for the devices, which provide up to ten hours of charging time in each port per day, have not yet been chosen.