Second Year Project

Mobile Arm Support

Liya Amanuel

Amanuel.1@osu.edu

Humanitarian Engineering Major

Second Year Project

Description

I have been on a four-person project team ever since August of 2017. This project team has been part of an organization here at OSU called Design for 90. The project is to create a lightweight mobile arm support for people who suffer from C6 spinal cord injuries. People who have C6 spinal cord injuries deal with fatigue in their arms, keeping them from being able to do simple tasks. Some tasks we tried to assist with are typing, keeping a book elevated for reading, and using a phone. This means that we focused on one plane of motion.

Process

The idea for this project originally came from a BME Capstone project that was done five years ago. Although we didn’t have the original prototype to look at, we still had the old documentation which proved to be very helpful. Our plan to complete this project was to mainly go through a design process the first half of the year. This included concept screening & scoring matrices, sketches, and collaborative discussions among group members. To make sure we were on track, we created both a google spread sheet that listed what needed to be done each meeting and took meeting notes at the end of every meeting. This allowed us to keep a sense of purpose for each meeting and make sure we weren’t wasting any valuable time.

Results

Currently we have assembled our prototype, but have yet had the opportunity to test it with a real patient. We work with BME professor Dr. Ruegsegger and we hope to use his contacts in getting an actual person who can test our prototype. Our prototype is much simpler than the original BME one and it is about $400 dollars less too. It was very exciting for me to see something that we have been sketching for months come to life.

Reflection

By being a Humanitarian Engineering Scholar, I was able to know about cool opportunities like Design for 90. In addition, I feel like I have grown as an engineer by being on this project team. Also, I grew more comfortable with understanding my role in an engineering group which led me to join another project team last February (The Buckeye Space Launce Initiative). This project is something that also has impressed others when I talk about it. I have incorporated my mobile arm support project into both interviews and career fairs and it is not only such an easy thing to talk about because I am truly passionate, but also something that shows that you are able to create something concrete by applying your engineering knowledge.

Pictures

 

Sketch #1

Sketch #2

Me and my fellow Design for 90 members