Hovering Homes? Bay Area Tech Company Files Patent To 'Float' Buildings During Earthquakes, Floods
LOS GATOS (CBS SF) -- A Bay Area company responsible for creating what could be the first functioning hoverboard may now have a way to keep a building from moving during a major earthquake with the very same technology.
Los Gatos-based Arx Pax, founded by husband-and-wife team of Greg and Jill Henderson, announced Thursday that it's integrating the ShakeAlert earthquake early-warning software into a patented three-part foundation system to protect against earthquakes, floods and sea-level rise.
"The ShakeAlert program aligns well with our long-term vision," Henderson said. "Our goal is to eliminate structural movement by pinpointing the exact time an object or building's 'landing gear' should retract and activate the hover engines."
Using 300 sensors scattered across the state, ShakeAlert works by detecting P-wave energy, the first energy to radiate from an earthquake, which rarely causes damage.
The Napa quake last August proved the technical capabilities of the early warning system by giving BART a 10-second notice before the shaking started.
Arx Pax says its foundation system includes a "containment vessel" that is meant to keep everything above it in place during an earthquake.
Buildings using the three-part foundation can float on a buffer, such as a fluid, gas or liquefiable solid, to greatly reduce the forces from natural disasters and essentially keep a building and everything inside it in place, according to the company.
In an earthquake, the shock waves are blunted through the buffer medium to the construction platform and any buildings residing on top of it.
So far, there is no known construction that has integrated this kind of technology. The closest thing to anti-shaking technology are base isolation systems designed to slow a building's movement in an earthquake, but they're expensive to integrate into most homes and buildings .
Arx Pax's technology may sound like a leap into the future, but watchful scientists seem hopeful.
In a press release, Arx Pax quoted a public relations officers at Berkeley Seismological Laboratory who said, "We are excited by the collaboration and vision Arx Pax has to offer ... (its) base isolation technology combined with the ShakeAlert early-warning system will allow state-of-the-art seismic protection and vibration control for buildings, operating rooms, highly-calibrated instruments and much more."
