Thanks everyone for your input! Hopefully I'll have some sketches back from the product designers in our team to show tomorrow, since it's quite a confusing concept to describe over here .
Interesting ideas, MrShev! Although I'm not sure about the safety aspect of attached rocket launchers onto the side of the buggy.. Haha.
Thanks for the input from dither and noonar too, your support is appreciated .
Ivor: I've heard of FMEA and been trying to implement it all along. We've had to reject several promising ideas simply because of safety aspects and problems with design - But none of us are engineers, so we can but try our best to work out the precise mechanics behind creating such a design. One of our designers has been studying folding systems intently, in all different kinds of products, in order to find the most efficient way to fold something of this kind.
As for the swivel itself.. It's slightly hard to describe without a picture, as I say. Imagine the usual four-wheel base of a stroller, with two swivelwheels at the front, except that base has a point in the centre of it, on top of it, at which it connects via a 'swivel mechanism' (I'm still working out exactly how it'll work, and have a few leads to follow up yet) to what's essentially a normal top-half of a stroller. Almost cocoon-like in design, the top frame houses the seat, which has the capacity to lay down in several positions like any normal seat, and features all the usual parts you'd expect a higher-end Maclaren stroller to have - Hood, some space for storage, foot rest etc..
The pivot allows the buggy to be set in one of two positions - Either forward or backward - And locks into place when you've adjusted it. Release of the locking mechanism would be acheived by either a squeeze of a handle, press of a button, or twist of a handle - So, yes, it'd most likely work via cables to make this as easy as possible. After release, the top part can be smoothly swivelled around so that the buggy is facing the opposite direction, and will automatically lock into place. The buggy's wheels are now still the correct way (i.e. swivel at the front, locked at the back with the brakes). The handle is pulled over from the other side, and will most likely be hinged at the bottom of the top-frame (if that makes sense) and split into both left and right parts, to allow for more efficient folding, although these two parts would move at once when pulling it over.
From what work we've done on folding mechanisms already, we're pretty positive we can find a way to make it fold in a traditional Maclaren sense - i.e. in a 3D way, both 'inwards', 'downwards' and 'together'. The pivot would be small enough to not hinder this folding process, but strong enough and wide enough to support the weight of the top-frame / child / constant swivelling.
We're quite eager to see if we can make this design work, at least in a 'concept' sense, since there's quite a lot of reasearch I've found supporting the design of a stroller like this.
If anybody else has any further questions, opinions, etc... just let me know. We're guessing a stroller like this would be targetted at a more 'upper-end' market, but nowhere near as expensive as a full-blown 'travel system' pushchair. Hopefully it'd appeal to dads as well as mothers, with choices in style of design / colour.. As well as the fact it's quite a quirky idea. We're aiming to make it as safe as possible as well - To appeal to mothers too - So no worries on that front . Let me know what you reckon..
Thanks for all your help, everybody!
J