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24/09/2007
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Tom Shelley reports on a challenging concept for moving people, and perhaps goods as well
One way to greatly accelerate transport along moving walkways would be to place parallel conveyors, moving at different speeds, alongside each other. Users would transfer from a slow moving belt to adjacent, increasingly faster ones. The process is reversed to leave the system.
The idea is the brainchild of Italian engineer Pietro Lacoponi, who lives in London and who seems to have come up with a practicable version of a scheme first conceived by HG Wells, whose story ‘The Land Ironclads’ inspired the design and development of First World War battle tanks. The multi-band moving conveyor system is described fully in his book, ‘The Sleeper Awakes’, first published in 1899:
“An endless platform of narrow transverse overlapping slats with little interspaces that permitted it to follow the curvatures of the street. Upon it were seats, and here and there little kiosks, but they swept by too swiftly for him to see what might be therein. From this nearest and swiftest platform a series of others descended to the centre of the space. Each moved to the right, each perceptibly slower than the one above it, but the difference in pace was small enough to permit anyone to step from any platform to the one adjacent, and so walk uninterruptedly from the swiftest to the motionless middle way”.
Unlike HG Wells, Mr Lacoponi has come up with a scheme for making it work. In his concept, which he calls Parallel Paths, the lateral slats – or Walk plates, in this case – are mounted on a sectional monorail, which runs in guides. Friction wheels, powered by motors, drive the monorail. The monorail supporting the plates has to be jointed, so that the arrangement can navigate corners and turn at the end of its path for the return journey.
Wells saw his idea as a likely replacement for transport running on city roads, the cost of which he did not think to estimate. Lacoponi, on the other hand, sees his system as suitable for airports, stadia and shopping centres.
Whether it could be made to meet health and safety requirements for human carriage remains to be seen, but there is no reason why it could not be used for the faster movement of goods, with robotic nudging of packages from slow moving bands to faster moving bands and back again, rather than items being dumped straight on to and off fast-moving conveyors at full speed. The idea is patented.
Pointers
* Parallel conveyor belts would move at different speeds.
* Users would start on the slowest moving belt and then step across to the next, faster moving, belt.
* While the idea is intended to speed the movement of humans, it could also be adapted to accelerating the movement of packages and products, avoiding the effects of dumping them on to, and off, fast-moving conveyors directly
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Author
Tom Shelley
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