Even the Phone Screen Withstood: uST Tested a Door Pinching

Not so long ago, we talked about a new development for electric string transport vehicles – a unique design of sliding doors, which was independently created by the engineers from Unitsky String Technologies Inc. Prior to that, swing-type doors were used in uST vehicles. According to designers, today the novelty is successfully passing all tests for compliance with safety requirements. To check it out all personally, we not only rushed to the production facility, but also conducted our own experiment.

Maximum safety is the main task

Doors are one of the most important parts of the unimobile. Their design determines how comfortable and safe the transport will be for passengers. As you know, today there are frequent cases of injuries from clamping the doors of a bus, train or subway. Unitsky String Technologies Inc. engineers are constantly searching solutions that can protect passengers from potential threats. That is why one of the testing stages of the new design was the jamming of door panels.

"Jamming is a pinching, i.e. a position in which an object, roughly speaking, is locked and does not have the ability to move, or the latter is difficult. Our doors are designed in such a way as to prevent passengers from being squeezed during boarding and disembarking, as well as to minimize the risk of possible injuries," – comments uST design engineer Artyom Savko.

The fundamental difference between the doors developed by UST Inc. is that they are designed for a fully automated transport. The design uses sensors that allow an intelligent system to detect obstacles, analyze the situation at the station and respond to a particular situation. Due to such a system, any touch in the doors of the string transport turns out to be insignificant and does not cause any damage to the health or property of the passenger. In addition, the mechanisms of moving the door panels function almost noiselessly. And the ease of operation makes it easy to open them even for people with disabilities.

"We have checked the degree of compression in three positions: closer to the ceiling, in the center and closer to the floor. The object of pinching was placed in the center of the doorway, closer to the edge with the doors open and in an intermediate position (a third of the opening). For all these variants, several pinches and touches were performed, after which their degree was analyzed. It became obvious to us during the tests that the design fully meets the safety requirements," – said the design engineer.

Let's check it out in practice. To verify all of the above personally, we decided to use a palm, a bag and a mobile phone as pinched objects. During the opening and closing of the door flaps, each of the test objects was substituted in turn. As a result, all items remained absolutely intact, including the phone screen. By the way, according to engineers, conducting a similar experiment with the design of doors in the subway, the device would definitely crack. However, you can always make sure of it yourself.

uST reference

uST vehicles will have different door configurations. This will increase the possibilities of adapting transport complexes to the customer's requests. Electric cars (iPods) can have different capacity and speed, as well as the ratio of standing and sitting places, interior configuration from minimalistic to VIP-version. Passengers can be boarded and disembarked from either one or both sides of the vehicle. The traffic is arranged both by individual pods or in a mechanical or electronic coupling. The servicing capacity varies from minimum to 50,000 people/hour.