Micropply TerraPrinter-TurfX - a multi-colour autonomous turf marking ‘robot’

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This project aims to demonstrate market feasibility of an autonomous multi-colour turfmarking ‘robot’ and ‘turf-friendly’ colourant ink cartridge ‘refill’.Sports Pitch Markings (logos/media messages) are a versatile and recent addition toprofessional turf playing surfaces in stadia. They play an important function incommunicating advertising/ sponsorship to public, feeding a US$trillion ad industry, as wellas delivering social messages (e.g. stop bullying). As such, turf markings give facility ownersability to construct education and advertising in prime locations (on both playing surface andsurrounding areas) which are televised to >100m viewers/wk in over 150 countries. This hasled to a wealth of global opportunity for both stadia owners and businesses providing turfmarking services.There are 100,000+ professional stadia globally, together providing 7.5bn seats to ticketholdersevery week. The total global markings industry is estimated at US$50bn, andemployees >250,000 people. The new turf logo segment is estimated at US$1bn (Gartner,2014). However, current multi-colour turf logo marking is done manually, requires a 6-8person team with expensive equipment (pumps, compressors, paint applicators), and requiresbespoke disposable templates designed/manufactured in advance to ensure proper logoappearance when televised. A further problem with current methods is that pigments inexisting turf paints used can only be removed by applying a chemical, which does not entirelyremove pigment from the turf, leaving visible stains. Further, current pigments are notcompostable, so remain in the ground substrate, preventing drainage and irreparablydamaging the turf. This is a major concern since a professional turf playing surface costs >£1m to install and is 95% of what is televised during a live sporting broadcast.TerraPrinter-TurfX solves these problems