‘Chameleon Balloon’ Protecting Citizen Safety … UNIST Wins Bronze at IDEA Awards

A disaster alert balloon that changes color like a chameleon won an award at one of the world's top three design competitions.

Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) announced on the 18th that Professor Kim Cha-jung's team from the Department of Design received a Bronze Award at the IDEA Design Awards.

The IDEA Design Awards, organized by the Industrial Designers Society of America, is considered one of the world's top three design awards alongside the Red Dot Design Award and the iF Design Award.

Professor Kim's team received the Bronze Award in the Professional category for the concept design of the disaster alert balloon called ‘SAFE UP.’ The Bronze Award, one of the main awards, is given to only the top 7% of entries.

The SAFE UP proposed by Professor Kim's team is a balloon that informs the disaster situation and risk level through real-time color changes. It was designed to protect citizens' safety in situations where radioactive materials, chemicals, viruses, etc., are leaked due to accidents or terrorism.

This design takes into account that such harmful substances are invisible to the naked eye and that access by land or communication at the accident site is often blocked.

Concept design of SAFEUP.

When the balloon is enclosed in a capsule and dropped over the disaster or terrorism site, it inflates like a parachute. The balloon surface is coated with a special material that reacts with specific harmful substances in the air, changing its color according to the danger level: red (danger), yellow (caution), and green (safe).

The balloon unfolds into an elongated shape at a height of 4 meters above the ground, making it visible from a distance. The color changes and their messages are intuitively designed so that anyone can easily recognize the danger and escape the site.

The advanced color-changing material applied to the SAFE UP balloon design is the result of joint research with Professor Lee Chang-young from the Department of Energy and Chemical Engineering and Professor Park Jong-nam from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at UNIST.

Professor Kim Cha-jung, who led the project, said, “This achievement, recognized on the global stage, was made possible by the fusion of next-generation material technology and innovative design that considers human safety values. It is also a meaningful award as it demonstrates the convergence of science, technology, and design, which is the goal of UNIST's design education.”

This project was supported by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy's Design Industry Technology Development program, led by the printed electronics company Faru Printing Electronics. UNIST is participating in the development of ‘responsive CMF (Color, Material, Finish) materials’ for this project together with Sungkyunkwan University and the Korea Flexible Electronics Association.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.