Aroc - experience sledging by Y.Aeschbacher from switzerland

The sledge

In few words, AROC is a concept sledge with waisted runners and a tiltable body that feels like riding a motorbike. But there’s so much more to it that it would be a shame not to go into some details: Starting with the runners – they are waisted and mobile, so if you tilt them, you carve through the snow like on skis. Their special form allows high speeds without losing the control, even though they’re much shorter than skis. To tilt them, the rider doesn’t need to do much else than just lean into the curve, like on a bike. Thanks to the connection between the seat and the runners, the sledge really enables a good sense of the underground and allows easy steering. On each side, there’s a handbrake, which allows more control for the balance in the curves and for the speed in general. You don’t need to put your feet into the snow during the whole ride – which is great, because we all hate soaking leg ends and hurting knees, don’t we?
The core of the concept is the frame: It has a rotating axis in the middle, which allows the whole sledge to tilt to the right and the left. Everything is mounted to it, which makes assembly and disassembly really easy. Right in the middle of this axis lies something hidden: a torsion bar. It helps always getting back into an upright position without using a lot of force while being completely invisible – like magic! The shape of the frame also lets the seat swing freely, hence offering a natural shock absorption. There are platforms for the feet as well as comfortable handles, so the rider never loses a stable position. How you ride it though, is completely up to you.

The feeling

AROC is a lot about fun, but not only. Its true purpose is dynamic and spectacular riding, which is more about serious sport than family activity. You ride it FAST, and it should feel like that. The concept expresses this attitude through the position the rider takes, the design and the construction. What can be compared best to it is most likely downhill biking, rather than traditional sledging. It is something new and it aims to set a new trend, which is nothing less than sledging on a more professional level.

The environment

It is in the nature of such concepts to be very complex when it comes to materials, construction and production. How can a product like this be environmentally responsible, affordable and convenient at the same time? We tried to counter these questions with a design as simple as possible – no material where it isn’t needed, no parts without a function and a construction that can be assembled and disassembled easily. The materials have to be defined yet, but we seek for something as durable and simple as the design itself, so that AROC can last over generations.

Inspiration

The initial idea was to develop a traditional sports gear and give it a completely new touch. It was important for us to pay a lot of attention to the emotional components when doing sports and bring them into the design process. Sledging seemed to be a field with a lot of potential; trying to combine it with the inspirations from downhill biking, motor biking and skiing opened up a completely new world.

Product or realization technology (and material)

The current design was realized mostly with moulded wood and a welded steel frame. Both materials offer good stability and easy processability. The frame could be realized entirely with standardized pipes. Very helpful was the bottom-up method, always trying to combine function and look in an ideal manner through experiment and function studies. Mockup-models provided important experience about materialistic requirements and dynamic behavior.

The runners

The runners are basically designed like traditional skis – a slightly negative pre-tension and a convex shape to enable carving. However, the downside features some unique properties: The (Lauffläche) is slightly angled to the middle, so the edges never cut into the snow when running full base down the slope. To give additional stability, there is a straight U-profile in the centre, compensating the relative shortness of the runners. Thanks to this profile, the sledge can catch high speed while staying fully controllable.

The frame

The frame is like the skeleton of the sledge: It supports the whole construction and enables all movements. The core of it is the rotation axis in the middle – thanks to that, the rider can tilt to the sides and steer the sledge. The torsion bar in the centre conserves the energy when shifting the weight and releases it to help getting back into an upright position. Thanks to the fact that it’s hidden, the design can be kept clean and injury hazards are minimized.

Teamwork

Working together in a team of three persons was a great experience. We match together really well, so each of us could bring something precious into the process – ideas, skills and experience. No wonder the motivation stayed high and there was always this kind of „fire“ that brings you forward really fast. We started really simple: Our first ideas were tried with LEGO, before we changed to small plastic models and – of course – life-sized prototypes. There was a clear principle we tried to stick to; everything was tested directly with functional mock-ups. These give you much more answers than all the sketches, plans and thinking and – most important – testing is a lot of fun. The sledge is not all about fun though. Our aim is to establish the concept on a similar stage like, for example, downhill biking. The perfect scenario would be that AROC makes a contribution to upraise sledging to a more professional level.