STEM students use technology to build solutions for disabled children
High-school students from across the Valley came together Saturday morning to compete in an event using technology to help find solutions for children with disabilities.
This event, which was sponsored by Southwest Human Development and Insight Enterprises, challenged eight high-school Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) teams from across Arizona to build solutions for disabled children using Internet of Things (IoT) technology.
IoT technology takes non-internet-enabled devices, such as chairs in this case, and combines them with electronics, sensors and software to collect and exchange data.
Jake Adams, the chief development officer at Southwest Human Development, says his team created this event three years ago after meeting a father who had a young child in a mechanical wheelchair.
Adams said it took two years to get all of the sponsors and volunteers together to figure out how to properly execute the competition and gather interest from surrounding high-school STEM teams.
The competition was part of of the inaugural Makers of Change Assistive Technology challenge.
Each team was given a scenario of a child ages infant to 5 with disabilities and told they only had four weeks to come up with a plan and execute it.
For example, 2-year-old "Patricia" was diagnosed with a seizure disorder and hypotonia after nearly drowning at 15 months, and as a result she was unable to sit independently.
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Although the scenarios and people were made up, they were representative of real situations and people with whom Southwest Human Development works.
The students worked to enhance assistive equipment that was originally built by Southwest Human Development's ADAPT shop.
For some students, like 16-year-old Elaina Ashton, coming up with cost-effective concepts for solutions came easily.
She said that once she saw the challenge that she and her teammates had to troubleshoot, she thought of the neck pillows that people use when traveling.
They ended up cutting one open, placing it at a certain angle and then aligned pressure sensors along the sides as a way to help "Patricia's" head stay up.
Ashton's team, Education Empowers, said that engineering was taking the experiences they have had and incorporating them to make something new.
"I wish that people would help develop the cause and help it be more cost efficient for people who can't get everything or who aren't fully able-bodied. It would just be great to see that change," said 16-year-old Monique Thomas, one of the members of Education Empowers.
Anna Prakash, the founder of the Education Empowers nonprofit, said it was really special to see her team come together to create something that could potentially change someone's life for the better.
"These girls all go to different schools, but they spend their weekends learning how to program and build in order to compete to help the greater good. And yet, they are only in high school," Prakash said.
Curt Cornum, the vice president of global business transformation at Insight, said these kinds of devices were perfect to track usable data to give back to parents or caregivers to see how their child was doing.
This in turn would accelerate the therapy the child was receiving, because parents would not have to wait to see results as they would be instant and in real time.
Each team had only eight minutes to present, explain their device and answer the judging panel's questions.
The panel was composed of Cornum, Janice Herman, a physical therapist at Southwest Human Development, and Matt Levac, an occupational therapist at Arizona Centers for Comprehensive Education and Life-Skills.
The judges rated each team on their design and quality, creativity, cost effectiveness, IoT stack and how it addressed the child's therapeutic problem.
The winning high-school team, the Bronco Boys from Brophy College, received $500 in cash to help fund their club.
"I can't wait to see where these teams go and what they create in the future, if this is what they are making now," Adams said.
For more information about the event, visit www.swhd.org/stem-assistive-technology-challenge-to-benefit-disabilities-programs.
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