Generative Design | Flight Mask

Generative design technology helps Edera Safety design a protective face mask for air travelers and flight crew

Designers at Edera Safety have come up with a promising new design for a travel mask which includes an anti-fog glass cover that lets people see facial expressions while communicating. The objective is for the mask to be sterilized and reused, making it both cost-efficient and waste-free.

The Austrian design company, which focuses on improving safety products, is now in talks with several European airliners to refine the mask design -- which was developed using Autodesk generative design -- for commercial production.

Designing protective gear that is comfortable with generative design

Edera Safety’s studio is located near Austria’s Graz Airport, which normally handles 700,000 flights annually. “We can see the enormous impact that COVID-19 has had on the airport and the region because there are so many fewer flights today,” says Thomas Saier, CEO and co-founder of Edera Safety. “It’s in all our interest to take the fear out of air travel, and right now, people aren’t confident with the protective gear that’s available.” Saier says travelers’ biggest concerns are that masks don’t provide enough protection or are uncomfortable to wear.

Generative design helped design a new comfortable and safe travel mask.

Generative design helps explore different design solutions for a new flight mask. Courtesy of Edera Safety

Creating a safer flying experience raised several challenges for the team: designing a mask that would protect passengers and crew, and doing so rapidly in a cost-effective, traveler-friendly way. A European airline consulting with Edera Safety estimates it would need 6,000 disposable face masks every day in order to protect passengers and crew on a full flight schedule—an endeavor that would cost about €10 million ($11.7 million USD) annually. “Plus,” adds Saier, “you also don’t want something that looks like a medical product. It’s always better to add style and user-friendly features to something that people need for safety reasons.”

Boosting safety while lowering costs with generative design

The design team had a few must-haves for its concept. The mask had to be reusable to drive down costs for airlines, it needed to be as unobtrusive as possible for comfortable wearing, and it needed a clear window for communication.

Generative design is widening designers' horizons to create innovative products

Generative design helped design a new comfortable and safe travel mask. Courtesy of Edera Safety

To address the challenges of safety, cost, and speed, Edera Safety turned to Autodesk generative design, which the team has used in the past to perform rapid iterations of designs and prototypes.

“Generative design is like having a personal design team to help speed up the process,” says Alexandre Martin, an Edera Safety designer working on the mask project. “You need a massive amount of ideation to augment your team’s own creative capacity. That’s what generative design does for you. The designers and the technology work together.”

As part of its design process, the Edera Safety team also used aPriori’s Cost Insight Engine in Fusion 360 to compare the manufacturing costs of its mask designs.

Generative design helps team explore more and expand horizons

Through the iterative design process and by using aPriori for cost insights, the design team estimates that supplying a year’s worth of reusable masks to the European airline would cost €1.5 million annually ($1.75 million USD), compared with the €10 million ($11.7 million USD) annual cost for disposable masks.

As of mid-2020, Edera Safety continues to consult with regional airlines as well as local airports to iterate and refine the mask designs, with an eye toward manufacturing prototypes based on stakeholder feedback. “With generative design, we can widen the horizons of our designers,” Saier says. “We can also discover more variations for ways to solve the specific real-world problems we’re addressing.”

Generative design is like having a personal design team to help speed up the process. You need a massive amount of ideation to augment your team’s own creative capacity. That’s what generative design does for you. The designers and the technology work together.

—Alexandre Martin, Product Designer, Edera Safety

Edera Safety

GENERATIVE DESIGN USED TO INNOVATE NEW TRAVEL MASK

Generative design technology helps Edera Safety design a protective face mask for air travelers and flight crew

Designing protective gear that is comfortable with generative design

Boosting safety while lowering costs with generative design

Generative design helps team explore more and expand horizons

Generative Design Resource Center

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