"Patent pending" and already picked up by a major manufacturer. So what this means is basically while it could be a good thing... the article is basically an advertisement for an upcoming product.
Not nearly as good a thing until it gets copied/the patent gets worked around. Also, zero explanation of what was actually done to accomplish this, so again, leaning more towards "this is just advertisement with extra steps".
New breakthrough that may change the entire landscape of an industry? Oh, we hear about breakthroughs every few weeks. Call me if it actually makes it to market.
New apparently game changing breakthrough that's already being taken to market? Boo advertising, we should just quiet launch it and see if anyone notices? Seriously?
IMHO, the thing that’s being promoted here isn’t the leaf blower. It’s the university’s engineering program and the opportunities it’s providing for students.
I kind of doubt someone has this University blog post in their deck of Spring 2024 leaf blower marketing initiatives.
This is the kind of stuff that the people managing internships handle in a company. Companies do this for talent acquisition. They don’t even do it for the cheap labor, because coaching students usually gobbles up a lot of your IC’s time.
Good engineering and industrial design programs find opportunities for students to work with real companies on real products.
Back in the day I used to be the student that published stuff like this to our product design department’s website. The point wasn’t to demo tech or sell a product, it was to make the program look like something worth applying to and donating to.
If a brand was name dropped, it wasn’t because we wanted to sell their thing. It was because we wanted to let applicants and alumni know that we were offering real world experience with recognizable companies. It’s basically like a reverse internship. Department faculty finds companies to bring to the students, as opposed to students applying to companies.
Why not use a rake? It exercises you and doesn't pollute. Plus it can make you laugh if you see someone walk into it and gets slapped cartoon style in the face.
Neighbor’s tree dumps leaves all over my concrete patio, every week. Rake doesn’t work well on concrete, doesn’t fit in every crevice the leaves fall in around my yard, and also takes awhile. Leaf blower does the job in 5 minutes. If you’re faced with this problem, you’ll pick the leaf blower over using an awkward rake for 20 minutes every week.
Also, leaf blowers are now battery powered, so concerns about gasoline emissions are not as much of a factor.
Unfortunately not very many people seem to use electric leaf blowers here, and even if you were to transmute that addition to an ICE blower it wouldn't make a difference considering that the engine would still be loud as fuck.
