The second part of STEM is also taught by Dr. Crowthers. The focus of STEM II are our assistive technology projects, where we create an engineering product that will help assist and improve the quality of life for individuals within the community. I worked with Jennifer Shaughnessy, Kweku Akese, Vaishnavi Harish, McKenna Childs, Amy Chen, Omar El Nesr, and Marlon Jost. Learn more about our product below!
Our client suffers from Merosin-Deficient Muscular Dystrophy, which weakens muscles and causes contractions (Dimachkie & Barohn, 2014), making mealtime and other activities difficult. Our goal was to create a robotic feeding device that allowed our user to eat independently and required limited motor ability to use effectively.
Though we worked with a specific client, this device is meant to be used by people with upper-body weakness who have trouble feeding themselves. We want our product to be versatile, affordable, and easy to use with minimum required movements in order to make it accessible to a wider range of audience.