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KOBE -- Students here have designed a bench to keep your buns cool in Japan's summer heat, and not only has one been installed in this western Japan city, it is set to be commercialized.

The "Cool Bench" was invented by students at the Kobe City College of Technology and installed in a plaza in front of JR Sannomiya Station in Kobe's Chuo Ward on July 22.

The 1.8-meter-long, two-seat bench is chilled by thermoelectric elements, a type of semiconductor device that absorbs or releases heat depending on the direction of electric current, and that is also used in wine fridges. Pressing a button on the side begins heat transfer from the seat to a metal component in the back, cooling the seats for five minutes. If the electric current is passed the other way, it will warm the seat instead.

Students at the college's Department of Electrical Engineering started developing the bench in 2020, and tested it at Higashi Yuenchi Park and Kobe Oji Zoo in cooperation with the Kobe Municipal Government.

Learning about their project, Hiroshima-based equipment engineering firm Chudenko Corp. and other parties have offered to jointly develop the bench as a commercial product. To do so, they are conducting research on using solar power so that the benches don't need to be plugged in. They are aiming to get the benches onto the market in a few years after working to make it smaller and reduce production costs.

A fourth-year student involved in the project commented, "It's like a dream that the bench we came up with is moving toward commercialization."

(Japanese original by Shinya Yamamoto, Kobe Bureau)

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