STEM II
STEM II is the second half of STEM with Science and Technical Writing that takes place between February and May and is taught by Dr. Crowthers. In contrast to STEM I, students now complete an Assistive Technology Project in groups of 4 to 5 students. Students normally contact a client with an issue that needs to be solved and work through the engineering design process to arrive at an effective solution that meets the needs of their client.
StabiliWare: An Assistive Eating Device for Individuals with Parkinson's Disease
Problem Statement
A common symptom for individuals with Parkinson's disease is tremors, often in the hand or jaw area. Tremors can pose a challenge when it comes to eating as it can be difficult for individuals to keep a spoon or fork steady, often resulting in spilling their food and making their dining experience frustrating (American Parkinson's Disease Association, 2017). An assistive device to aid individuals with Parkinson's while eating is needed.
Design Approach
Our initial approach to this problem involved three different designs. The first was a swivel spoon that would allow an inner bowl to swivel inside an outer bowl, leveling itself with gravity (Figure 1). The second was a covered spoon that had a retractable cover (Figure 2). The food would be covered when lifting from the user's plate to their mouth and then uncovered when they are eating. There was the potential for this design to be motorized. The last was a spoon that incorporated a TENS (Transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation) unit to attempt to limit the tremors by stimulating the muscle (Figure 3). We pursued research and preliminary prototypes for each of these ideas, but ultimately settled on a fully mechanical design to lower cost and limit complications with food and electrical components (Figure 4).
Prototypes
Figure 1: The first major prototype we made was a version of the swivel spoon. This spoon had an inner an outer bowl that could spin around each other, functioning on the idea that the inner bowl would self-level if tipped and prevent food from being spilled. It had a detachable handle and could come apart completely for easy washing.
Figure 2: The second major prototype we made was a motorized version of the covered spoon. Power and control systems would be stored inside the spoon handle, which would fully detach for easy cleaning. The outer bowl would be spun by the motor to act as a cover when being transported to the user's mouth for the inner bowl holding the food. Motor control would rely on an Arduino Nano and motor driver.
Figure 3: The third major prototype we made was a spoon that integrated a TENS unit to electrically stimulate the muscles to mitigate tremors. The spoon would potentially feature one of the previous designs, either a swivel mechanism or cover mechanism to provide the maximum protection against spills.
Figure 4: The final major prototype and our final design was a fully mechanical covered spoon. It consists of a lever handle that has an integrated rack. When squeezed, it spins a gear connected to the outer cover spoon. It fully covers the inner spoon until the user releases the lever when they are ready to eat the food.
Future Steps
Moving forward, we plan on finding ways to optimize our design, potentially changing the material and making small alterations to the geometry. However, the general design concept will stay the same for now because we feel that it is a unique and effective approach to the problem. The Assistive Technology Fair gave us valuable feedback on ways that we could improve and suggested factors that we did not consider, such as the strength that it would take to squeeze the handle. One of the ways that we want to optimize our design is by making this mechanism easier to actuate. We also want to do more comprehensive testing with a larger pool of clients to get as much user feedback as possible.