The new design also takes care to incorporate an electromotor drive using a battery. The fully automated ice resurfacer makes work easier since it doesn’t require a human presence to operate it.

“The appearance establishes the uniqueness and timelessness of the automated ice resurfacer concept and is streamlined in spirit with a purity of form,” stated Ing. Róbert Machálek, describing the device. The ice resurfacer design is influenced by the principles typical for streamlined design. The designer has emphasized simple and fluid lines, and the whole vehicle volume is built with a stress on purity and logic.

Ice resurfacer (“Rolba”)

This is a device used for resurfacing ice in ice hockey stadiums, playing areas and ice rinks. The word for ice resurfacer in Czech is “rolba”. It originally referred to the brand of the Rolba machine which has now become a genericized trademark. Today in Czech the words “to rolba” (verb) or “rolba-driver” (human operator) are commonly used. Customers began perceiving the brand as designating a general kind of goods, and stopped connecting it with a particular brand. Some other products have shared a similar fate, such as Walkman, Hoover or Sellotape. This is a nightmare for brand owners and they try to prevent it through targeted advertising.

A unique design requires protection as a registered industrial design. Instrumental in securing this protection was the Institute of Technology Transfer, an organization dedicated to protecting intellectual property at BUT.