Example:
ME450 Senior Design Project: Sit-to-Stand Lifting Device
Professor Koren, Fall 2011
Team 1: Chris Bury, Matthew Olson, Ian Secor, Mike Townsend
ABSTRACT
The project is to design and build a device that lifts and supports patients with cerebral palsy from a sitting to standing position. The customer is a 28 year old man living in New York City who currently relies on a caretaker to lift and move him around because he lacks the coordination and leg strength to do so on his own. A device that is easily accessible that could lift him from the sitting to standing position with minimal assistance would greatly benefit him and those in his life.
The finished prototype provides a very useful and viable solution. We were able to produce a very stable and safe device that functions exactly as we designed it to. We have developed a product that, with some small additions that would help enhance functionality and increase comfort and aesthetic appeal, could be very successful on the market.
Example:
ME450 Senior Design Project: Gait Trainer
Professor Koren, Fall 2011
Team 2: Alec Cohne, Dan Kelly, Weiyang Lin, Elizabeth Tennent
ABSTRACT
We designed and built a gait trainer for people with cerebral palsy (CP). People with cerebral palsy often lack the ability to walk unaided because of problems with their motor skills and muscle strength. We are designing specifically for Ariel Sheinman, who has CP and needs assistance walking.
Our final design concept used scissor linkages for weight support and adjustability. The scissor linkage system allows the frame to collapse on itself for easy folding, which is an important customer requirement. Our gait-trainer offers weight support and height adjustability and also provides dynamic weight support, which is important for a natural walking pattern. We also incorporated an additional degree of folding to the device which, when combined with the scissor linkages, provided a unique and versatile method of weight support along with a very transportable device.
Example:
ME450 Senior Design Project: Hand-Operated Paraplegic Exercise Bicycle
Professor Koren, Fall 2011
Team 3: Zach Talus, Matt MacLean, Ryan Linderman, Brad Smith
ABSTRACT
The project is to design a hand-operated exercise bicycle for paraplegics. This bicycle is specifically designed to provide movement to the legs while pedaling to maintain blood circulation in the rider’s feet. The scope of this project is to demonstrate the decoupling of the leg and hand motion due to its innovative aspects. Therefore, there are features not included in our prototype but would be incorporated in a full-scale design. This is because they are already on the market and do not propose an innovative challenge.
These features include: gear system for speed control, flywheel resistance, aesthetics and ergonomics.
Example:
ME450 Senior Design Project: Foam Block Mechanism to Adjust Patient Position in a Hospital Bed
Professor Koren, Fall 2011
Team 4: Karan Ahuja, Scott Corey, Nathan Thome
ABSTRACT
Patients with limited physical strength and mobility in the hospital bed have a problem of gradually sliding down toward the end of the bed when it’s tilted to the sitting position. This can cause the patients great discomfort and possibly cause ulcers and other injuries. Teams of caregivers or expensive and time-consuming machinery are required to move the patients back into sitting position. This project is designed to create an electro-mechanical system, using a new mattress of reconfigurable foam blocks moving in a synchronized motion, to return the patient to a comfortable position and possibly massage them.
Example:
ME450 Senior Design Project: Height Adjustable Transfer Seat
Professor Koren, Fall 2011
Team 5: Cody Craine, Michael Harrison, Sarah Hopkins, Nathan Smith
ABSTRACT
For wheelchair users, it is difficult to transfer from the wheelchair to another seat. A sliding board is commonly used to make transfers, but its use requires extensive physical strength when the seats are at different heights. The goal of the project is to design a “Height Adjustable Transfer Seat” (HATS) to be used within a room containing exercise equipment which is able to adjust the height of the seat to allow level, and therefore easier, transfers to the NuStep T5. The HATS should be safe, easy to use, durable, time efficient, portable, comfortable, and have a good overall appearance.
Example:
ME450 Senior Design Project: In-line Inspection of Surface Finish of Crankshaft Journals
Professor Koren and Dr. Hagay Bamberger, Fall 2009
Team 16: Ian Lind, Michael Luginbill, Tony Nalli, Joe Shaktman
ABSTRACT
Crankshaft bearings of an automotive engine require smooth and high reliability performance as they operate in a harsh environment of heat, pressure, abrasion and chemical attack that may cause wear. The bearings are designed to meet high precision tolerances and require high quality surface finish and surface topography. The journals are first grounded and finally polished to an outstanding surface finish in the order of sub-micrometers. In a mass-production process the tapes that are used for final polish may break without being revealed by the automation. Therefore, it is essential to provide an in-line inspection system for such parts to eliminate manual inspection. In order to achieve this goal, we developed a machine vision technique to validate that all journals were polished and detect the unpolished parts. In utilizing this technique, a full size prototype go/no-go demonstrator was built to validate the performance and reliability of the method. The sensitivity of the system is high enough to differentiate sub-micron level roughness change of the crankshaft surface.
Example:
ME450 Senior Design Project: Elevating Wheelchair
Professor Koren, Fall 2007
Team 3: Joshua Diaz, Calvin Helfenstine, Scott Hyder, Milinda Kannangara,
ABSTRACT
Wheelchair users who work in plant environments are constantly struggling to establish their independence and increase their capabilities. To provide them with further support, a manual-elevating wheelchair, currently unavailable, will be explored through research, design, and prototype modeling. The goal of this project is to provide an economical and lightweight alternative to existing wheelchairs that provide the user, in this case an assembly line worker, the same reach capabilities as a standing person as well as the same mobility from a lightweight manual wheelchair.
Professor Koren demonstrates the elevating wheelchair