Automist can detect and put out fires

A life-saving student design that could replace the smoke alarm as the essential home gadget has won the international James Dyson Award.

 
Automist, which was chosen from the final shortlist by inventor James Dyson, can both detect fires and put them out by aerosolising the water from a standard kitchen tap.

Automist can be fitted directly onto any standard kitchen tap to create domestic alternative to a sprinkler system. In the event of a fire, a wireless heat detector triggers the under-sink pump driving water through a nozzle – quickly filling the kitchen with a fine mist to put out the blaze.

 
London product design graduates, Yusuf Muhammed and Paul Thomas, will receive a £10,000 cash prize. There university department at the Royal College of Art will also receive £10,000.
 
James Dyson appreciated the inventors’ ingenuity, saying, “This simple but clever device should become a permanent safety feature in the home. Smoke alarms are essential part of modern life but have remained fundamentally unchanged for forty years. Automist not only detects a fire but can put it out as well.”
 
60% of domestic fires originate in the kitchen. Each year more than 400,000 fires occur in US homes, resulting in thousands of deaths and injuries.

 
The idea for the design came from a brainstorming session with a number of firemen at Chelsea Fire Brigade in London. The team worked on the design with trauma and stress experts, fire engineers, international sprinkler specialists and fire fighters. A working prototype was tested in a fire facility.

Muhammed was thrilled to learn his idea had won, “It’s fantastic news. Paul called to let me know we’d won at 2.30 in the morning. We’re hoping to use the prize money on testing and getting Automist on sale.”

The James Dyson Award is an international design award that celebrates, encourages and inspires the next generation of design engineers. It’s run by the James Dyson Foundation, James Dyson’s charitable trust, in 21 countries.