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I began my journey in Discovery and Innovation in fear. I was afraid of unveiling my creative limitations. I constantly wondered, what happens if my creativity doesn't go beyond my ability to define a problem? What if I cannot discover an innovative solution to the problem I am interested in addressing? I discovered quickly that that I was not alone in this thinking, and that many others taking the course felt the same way. This feeling of community empowered me, turning fear into action.
My first action was to define a problem. There are many problems that exist in the world, and figuring out which one I wanted to solve was a daunting task. I made a 'bug' list. This is a method used in Conceptual Blockbusting to bring to light simple problems that present themselves while performing everyday tasks. My list consisted of thirteen 'bugs' that compressed into three categories consisting of traffic/travel safety, item retrieval, and things to make life in a microbial lab easier. I chose to focus on traffic and travel safety.
I had never before tried to think about how to improve driver safety, that is why I was most drawn to this area of research. This class offered an opportunity to investigate something completely different from what I study in the laboratory on a daily basis. I study cave bacteria and wanted to ship (Linchpin) a solution to something new to me. I pinpointed key areas that are in dire need of innovation; 1) there is a time lag between a problematic event (item in road, wreck, officer has a car pulled over, etc.) on roadways and the delivery of that information to drivers 2) riding a bike or a scooter is very dangerous, people are still dying in accidents involving cars and 3) DWI rates are declining very slowly, and texting while driving is become ever more popular. I then considered each of the three areas one at a time.
Finding the reason for the gap between the occurrence of an event on a road way and the knowledge of this to vehicles in the area seemed too simple at first glance. There are three main components whilst driving, the road, the driver, and the car. These three need to interact on a smart level for a rapid spread of knowledge. The solution: smart roads. If roads were smart and interacted with smart cars that relayed information to drivers then the problem of time lag would be solved. The problem imbedded in this is changing the infrastructure of our already developed road systems. How do we make the roads mart without completely changing them? What cost of changing the road system will not exceed the necessity for speedy information? The addition of sensors along roadways that relay information to smart cars through a sensory grid (that mirrors the neuronal network in our bodies) would be helpful. I thought if this were impossible then there could be free roaming driverless cars that are sent out to a crash and are able to arrive before police officers. These free roaming vehicles could be fully equipped with first aid materials and orange signs indicating a car accident. If these cars were too costly I also thought of (by investigating concept cars on the web) temporarily turning the outside of smart cars, that will be used for advertisements in the future, into road signs as they pass an accident (perhaps beginning the signal 0.5 miles before the wreckage). Upon further investigation, I read about a town in a city in Nevada with driverless cars. This city is clearly on its way to smart roads. In fact, I came upon a short segment of smart road outside of Albuquerque's Sandia Casino. When people begin crossing the road the road lights up the walkway allowing drivers to see that people are crossing the street. I moved on to scooter and runner safety.
People who drive scooters, runners and bikers are still news items because they have been involved in an accident involving a vehicle. Accidents like these usually end up in fatalities are the result of a distracted driver. Solutions to this could be making the runners and bikers more visible or audible to drivers. Conceptual Blockbusting has a segment about including the use of all of our senses when exploring solutions to a problem. What is runners could emit a sound while crossing the road? The problem with this is the speed of sound and its arrival at cars traveling at varying speeds. If a car is traveling very fast, it may not matter if they heard the sound or not because it could be too late. So what about making the runner or biker more visible? What if we use LED lights on the upper body along the sides of the person's shirt or as shoe laces? Or what if we put LED on helmets and sleeves that can act as turn signals? Some of these are solutions that have already been thought of and are currently being carried out using EL Wire and other LED components. Even with the implementation of LED, there is a problem with visibility during daylight hours and with vehicles that are traveling too fast to react or that belong to distracted drivers. I moved on to tackle distracted/impaired drivers.
We could put an end to many car crashes if there were a solution to drunk and distracted drivers. I began with distracted drivers. What if we could disable cellular phones while operating a vehicle? There is an app that exists that will do this for you and sends a text message to incoming callers and text messages. What if our phones synced to the car and all calls and texts were managed through voice control? The 2011 Lexus series pairs your phone to your car as soon as you enter it. It is just a few years away from enabling text message replies by voice control in a similar manner. Moving on to drunk drivers, what if there were a key that could sense intoxication? There is a device called Smart Key that is connected to your vehicle and displays a series of LED lights that must be repeated by you, the driver. If you fail three times you strike out for an hour and cannot start the vehicle. I considered a system where the vehicle could sense your eye patterns and then ask for a response to a series of questions (are you okay? Are you intoxicated? Do you need coffee? Etc.). If there is no response an emergency vehicle will be notified. There is a vehicle made in Japan that has a miniature robot in it that talks to the driver through mismatched patterns to previous driving behavior. At this point, I became frustrated because there seemed to be solutions to the problem I was most interested in. I realized that a lot of money is used in researching transportation and safety. I needed a new muse so I took a few days to reflect.
I was outside of my lab one day, enjoying a moment of the fresh New Mexican Spring air when I saw a huge truck pull into a handicapped parking spot. I have watched this time and time again where people without a disability throw a sticker on their rearview mirror and walk to class. I kept watching the truck because I was interested in seeing the culprit. I watched a young man open his door, then the passenger door behind him and maneuver his wheelchair to the ground in front of him. I watched him mount his chair shut the doors to his truck and carry on. I was amazed at the time it took this young man to get out of his vehicle, appalled at how he had to get into his chair, and amazed by his patience. I immediately thought, why is it that we have smart cars and not smart wheelchairs? This was my area of innovation!
In order to investigate wheelchairs, I needed to gain some insight. So I interviewed my friend Tye who has been in a chair for over 10 years because of muscular dystrophy. I asked him about the challenges he faced on a daily basis. Sometimes this can be a difficult question to answer because one can become accustom to many of the annoyances and challenges he or she faces while in a wheel chair. This is likely because the challenge presents itself so often that to fixate on it would be a detriment. The three most common challenges that Tye faces on a daily basis include transferring from one car to another, opening doors that don't have the handicapped accessible button, and getting to his backpack.
I took all three of these challenges into careful consideration as potential focuses of my innovation efforts. First up was the challenge of transferring. A transfer from a wheelchair to a vehicle begins with driving up next to an open car door. Doors on an unaltered vehicle from the factory can only open to a certain extent. Often this extent does not offer enough space for a wheelchair to drive up close enough to make seat to seat contact. This creates a space between the vehicle and the chair, there is room for innovation here. Another problem that arises during transferring is a difference in height between the chair and a vehicle, particularly cars that sit lower than the hair. A wheelchair seat can be raised to meet the seat of a truck or SUV, but not lowered. There is room for innovation in this as well.
I thought of creating a wheelchair that is able to be lowered all the way to the ground if necessary. This would be helpful when someone falls out of their chair as well as for low vehicles. The first problem that arises with this is the large battery that sits underneath the seat of the chair. To avoid this I thought why not have the chair move vertically and then be able to move up or down? The obvious problem that arises with this is a significant shift in the center of gravity. This freaky increases the likelihood of tipping over. Perhaps it would be possible to use gyroscopes like the Segway to do this. Once I thought about innovations for making a better chair I also thought why not put in heating and cooling on the seats, make it climb stairs, all weather etc. The more I looked into this the more obvious a bigger problem became. I believe that the reason why wheelchairs have not had many technical advances in the 140 years since they were developed (in the Civil War) is because our society's institutions are unwilling to pay for luxury. In the United States alone there are over 3 million lifetime wheelchair users. we have decided just how much each one of these peoples lives are worth, and no more. The average motorized wheelchair costs up to $30,000 but if you have upper body mobility you're only worth $4,000. This set price range has put a huge damper on wheelchair innovations.
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Let's take the ibot for example. It was developed in 2006 and could climb stairs, trek through three inches of water and gravel, and put the user at eye level with the rest of the world. Each unit cost around $26,000, which is pretty close to our $30,000 allotment. But there was a catch, you needed a prescription to get one. In 2009, just three years after its development, Johnson and Johnsons Independence Technology stopped making the Ibot. It wasn't a profitable business model. |
After the Ibot, defense contractors started making exoskeletal suits for US soldiers to carry large amounts of weight while quickly traveling across the natural terrain of any environment. These will soon be distributed to soldiers. As an afterthought, exoskeletal suits are slowly being developed for people in wheelchairs that have upper body mobility. As long as this is a profitable design, it may be useful for a longer time period than the Ibot.
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One of the newest innovations in wheelchair technology is the Tek Robotic Mobility Device made in Turkey. Again, this model is for people with upper body mobility. This product allows the user to stand upright as well as sit down, it is also half the width of conventional wheelchairs and costs around $15,000. A problem may arise with this product if we try bringing it to the United States. Remember that someone with upper body mobility is allotted only $4,000. |
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I moved forward from designing a new wheelchair to help with transferring because of the issue with insurance companies being only willing to pay for the basic platform for mobility, and because there is money being spent toward fixing this problem in a novel way. There are vehicles like vans that allow wheelchair users to simply drive in, completely bypassing transferring. This innovation has recently been taken even further with the development of the wheelchair car. This is a car designed so that the back opens for the user to drive in and then drive the vehicle. This is a great development. That follows our current process for the advancement of wheelchairs, change the world to fit the chair but not change the chair. |
As a Second Project I investigated the problem associated with opening doors lacking the handicapped button. To open a door without handicapped access a wheelchair user has to pull up to get as close as they can to it and reach for the handle. Once the handle is grasped the wheelchair user backs up, opening the door, and has to rush through the opening before it closes. In rooms where there isn't much space around the doorway, opening it is virtually impossible. This makes the wheelchair unable to pull up close enough or at the correct angle for the user to grab the door handle. There is certainly room for innovation here.
I first thought about the simplest model possible for a device to open doors. I set out to design something similar to a cup holder. A cup holder can handle many sizes of cups while maintaining a tight grip. I thought that if this design could have a release button and was made in the shape of a circle (for knobbed doors) and linear (for straight handle doors), then I may have a device that opens all doors. The problem associated with this is that there are more shapes of handles that need to be dealt with like the ones with a thumb lever and straight handle. I then began thinking about designs that already exist for grabbing and reaching things. These models are close but do not have the intricate movements for opening doors. This is a robotics problem in need of an innovation of something like a prosthetic arm. The great thing about this is it doesn't have to look like an arm so it could be made more inexpensively than prosthesis. This problem soon became frustrating and I moved on to solve a third problem that my friend Tye told me about.
My investigation ended with the problem of making backpacks on wheelchairs accessible to the user. Although it was third on the list, it was the most tangible to my creative thought process. I figured why not grant a greater level of independence to people in wheelchairs beginning with giving them access to the stuff they already have, the stuff on the back of their hairs. I met with Tye a second time to discuss some of the details of my design. This meeting helped me create boundaries on the device I was setting out to make. A few things that I needed to take into consideration were maintaining the original width of the wheelchair. Whatever the design was it could not add width to the chair. Another thing I had to keep in mind was making the device with little to no maintenance, inexpensive, and robust. Wheelchairs already have maintenance issues so adding to this would not be a worthwhile purchase to the user. Making the product designed to grab things from the back of their chair needs to be cheap enough to want for the completion of this small but necessary task (retrieval). A robust design is necessary for the design of anything worth manufacturing and purchasing, it is an essential component of any technology.
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My idea for the first design was to use a rail system that follows alongside the chair but just underneath the arm rest so as to no create additional width with the railing. This railing would provide a system for moving the users items from back to front. The problem with this design comes in when the user needs to transfer. In this moment the user lifts up the arm rests and moves their body to the side. The railing would need to be at least at the height of the arm rests for item retrieval. A way around this may be to have the user always transfer from the same side of their chair, this is a creation of a new problem for the sake of solving another. Not a worthwhile solution. |
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I later came up with a different idea for an item retrieval product that involved bringing the items from the back of the chair up and over the chair. This would likely need parallel metal rods that scope (for extension and retraction) creating two candy canes that an item would be attached to. The way this would work is by extending the parallel rods that would go up and over the chair (and the head of the user) delivering a backpack or whatever needs retrieval from the back of the wheelchair. The problem that arises with this is the amount of weight that could be carried and danger associated with having items hanging over the head of the person in the wheelchair. This would not have been a robust solution to the problem of item retrieval. |
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My third design idea came from a combination of a scoping rod in the shape of a candy cane and a robotic arm. Because I have no formal training in robotics I took on the development of a scoping device that hooks an item at the end of the candy cane that lifts up and swivels round delivering it to the user. Before this project I had never used tools nor shopped at a hardware store, this course provided the opportunity to gain both of these valuable life skills. I went to Lowes hardware store and purchased PVC pipes that fit into one another, a piece of plexy glass to mount the prototype to, screws, PVC glue, washers, a large spring and hook, and nuts. I also borrowed a few necessary tools including; a jigsaw, a hand saw, wrenches, a PCV smoother, a drill etc. With these materials I developed a prototype of a robotic arm that retrieves things from the back of the chair and brings it to the front at the convenience of the user. My product, Hobson, is one small step toward making life in a wheelchair less inconvenient. It is a dependable solution offering independence. Dependable because we have already used robotics to explore the surface of Mars and to greatly improve surgical procedures. I designed this because I bought a fully loaded 2011 Nissan Sentra for $16,000 and my friend Tye bought a chair for twice as much that doesn't even allow him to carry a backpack to school with. We need to move wheelchairs into the 21st Century, and that begins with developing a fully functional Hobson. I am ending this project asking for a team of designers or a robotics enthusiast to help put this in the rightful hands of 3 million lifetime wheelchair users. This product is a simple design and together we can manufacture it. |
Elevator Pitch 1, 4/16/2012
Have you ever thought about what it's like to go through life in a wheelchair?
For example, how do you get stuff out of your backpack that's on the back of a wheelchair?
Somebody has to get that for you, until now.
I have developed a prototype for a motorized robotic arm that retrieves things from the back of a wheelchair and brings it to the front at the convenience of the user.
My product, the pack and swivel, is one small step toward making life in a wheelchair less inconvenient.
It is a dependable solution offering independence.
The pack and swivel will offer backpack access to 3 million users in the United States.
This is a simple robotics problem. With robots we have explored the surface of Mars, replaced many factory workers, and greatly improved surgical procedures.
So why is it that Tye and 3 million others like him have to ask for help getting their backpack?
I need to get this motorized. (move it from prototype to fully functional)
This problem dates back over a century to the first wheelchair ever made.
Insurance companies tell us how much were worth, and if you can do this (move as if using a nonmorotized wheelchair), its between $3 and $30,000 dollars.
For $30,000 we can do X X and X but we cant make a backpack accessable?
This is a call to action for you the engineer, you the robotics nerds, and you the future of America.
The insurance companies aren't going to pick this up, are you?
Elevator Pitch 2, 4/19/2012
In the United States alone there are over 3 million lifetime wheelchair users.
Have you ever thought about what life is like in a wheelchair?
For example, how do you get to your backpack when its on the back of your chair?
For the last 100 years somebody had to get that for you, until now.
I have developed a prototype of a robotic arm that retrieves things from the back of a wheelchair and brings it to the front at the convenience of the user.
My product, the baguette, is one small step toward making life in a wheelchair less inconvenient.
It's a dependable solution offering independence.
Dependable because we have already used robotics to explore the surface of Mars and to greatly improve surgical procedures.
Oh and did you know that motorized wheelchairs cost up to $30,000?
I bought a 2011 Nissan Sentra for $16,000 and it is all weather, can trek through huge puddles, gravel and sand, has cup holders a stereo and heating and cooling.
My friend Tye paid twice as much for a chair that he can't even use to carry a backpack to school with.
This is a huge imbalance in our efforts of innovation, lets move wheelchairs into the 21st Century starting with moving this product from prototype to fully working.
If you are a designer or robotics enthusiast, I need YOU to put this in the rightful hands of 3 million wheelchair users.
Elevator Pitch 3, 4/23/2012
In the United States alone there are over 3 million lifetime wheelchair users.
Have you ever thought about what life is like in a wheelchair?
For example, how do you get things out of your backpack when its on the back of your chair?
For the last hundred years someone had to get that for you, until now.
Because I have developed a prototype of a robotic arm that retrieves things from the back of the chair and brings it to the front at the convenience of the user.
My product, Hobson, is one small step toward making life in a wheelchair less inconvienient.
It is a dependable solution offering independence.
Dependable because we have already used robotics to explore the surface of Mars and to greatly improve surgical procedures.
Did you know that a motorized wheelchair can cost up to $30,000?
I bought a fully loaded 2011 Nissan Sentra for $16,000 and my friend Tye bought a chair for twice as much that doesn't even allow him to carry a backpack to school with.
We need to move wheelchairs into the 21st Century, and that begins with developing a fully functional Hobson.
So, if you are a designer or a robotics enthusiast, I need YOU to put this in the rightful hands of 3 million lifetime wheelchair users.
Movie script
1. Elizabeth (closeup, looking into camera): My name is Elizabeth Montano and this is my project for Discovery and Innovation at the University of New Mexico.
2. (voice over, reenactment of me watching someone in a truck get their wheelchair out of the back and get in it, me having an aha moment) Have you ever thought about what it's like to be in a wheel chair? What about some of the challenges you'd face on a daily basis?
3. (voiceover ) In the United States alone there are over 3 million lifetime wheelchair users. Many of whom attend school here at the University.