Sony Patents Liquid Airbag - What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

Rant of the Day Dept: You know a company is in trouble when a technical breakthrough is viewed with skepticism. Call me jaded, but Sony’s recent patent of a gel, or oil, or saline-filled “Air Bag” to cushion electronics such as the hard drives in laptops and other components in cameras strikes me with a fierce sense of dread more than anything.

Consider the present: My Sony laptop is tiny and has a great screen, but it is hotter than the hinges of Hell when you use it for more than a few minutes. I can just imagine the smell of burning oil or hot melting silicone when a defective battery overheats, or something really really heavy crunches down on your camera. Processors are not the coolest chips the world, and electronics are getting smaller and smaller. You’re better off wrapping your camera in a gel case than risking the innards.

What do you think? Am I being too cautious? Or do you want to wait until your camcorder gets a hot oil treatment to weigh in?

The technology is intended for use in mobile devices such as cameras and media players, and could also find its way into business-orientated technology such as smartphones and laptops. Sony’s engineers said that while the use of liquids to absorb shock has been suggested before, previous versions depended on floating the electronics between two immiscible fluids, or using a gel-like viscous substance. They argued that those systems would be difficult to configure and may not provide enough absorption to deal with heavy shocks.

The new scheme proposes that the fluid-filled inner skin will also contain “biasing units” to keep the electronics central, and a system of irises that adjust their resistance to liquid flow according to the force of impact. Source: Storage.itworld.com