Student invents device to help with arm mobility

“[CRI] is a rowing program that’s basically trying to cater to people who are Olympians, but also paralympians and children and people with disabilities. They had a variety of projects for us to work on. I worked on a project that created a glove for people who had weak grip strength or things like that. So they can keep rowing even if their hand gives out. You’re making something with your hands, which is a skill not a lot of people our age have. You’re taking a piece of wood or PVC pipe, or aluminium and you’re turning it into something that’s useful and that’s part of what’s kept me in engineering”, she explained.

The student loved it so much that she thought about taking an independent study for the next semester. That’s when she spoke with Rabbi Bodian who had a potential idea for her. She told her all about a friend of hers, Colby, that suffers from thrombocytopenia with absent radius (or TAR Syndrome, which causes one's arms to develop without the radius).

Rabbi Bodian suggested that Sarah could build something to help him. The student agreed and started talking to Colby, who told her that he had been using a tool that his dad made him — a four-foot wooden pole with a hook on one end and a tool hook on the other. But has he explained, the problem with this device was it was too big to carry around. And he and his family had been looking for years for a solution.

Sarah went through several mockups to come up with a prototype that would meet Colby’s needs, using different materials and with different collapsing and expanding mechanisms.

“I had to create a device that was sturdy, that could extend and collapse to fit in like a backpack and something that he was comfortable using out and about. The point of mockups and sketch models are you do them even if you don’t think it’s going to work just to help you think about it. I thought about something with a button you can press on to collapse like a crutch or a cane, but that can be a hassle and a half. Then I thought about a tent pole but it wouldn’t be as stable. Then I remembered something that has actually been used in the Wellesley Engineering lab for CRI a few years back. It was a successful project. It was made for grabbing the handles of an erg, a rowing machine, for people who can’t reach that far”, the student observed.

After that, she just had to search and making the necessary materials.

When the project was finished, Sarah mailed it to Colby who told her he was really excited and was using this new tool instead of the old one.

Sarah will make improvements according to Colby’s feedback.

“It was a really intense and difficult process but it’s so rewarding to see him using it. It’s really made it all worth it”, the inventor expressed.
Adapted from: https://bit.ly/2GePMb4