Inventive engineering helping pupils

Four-year-old Hayley Martin – on her left is Dr Roger Halkyard and on her right, Dr Doug Wilson, both from the Faculty of Engineering.

A novel invention by students from the Faculty of Engineering at The University of Auckland is helping students with Cerebral Palsy at a special school experience freedom of movement.

A “motorised wheelchair platform” has been developed over the last two years and donated to Carlson School for Cerebral Palsy in Epsom, Auckland. It teaches children in manual wheelchairs how to operate a motorised chair.

A student’s manual wheelchair is strapped on to the platform and connected to a controller, allowing the student to move forward, backward, left or right.

“The platform will enable our students who are not eligible for a motorised wheelchair to experience self-motivated movement,” says Bev Anich, an occupational therapist at Carlson School.

For students entitled to a motorised chair through the health system, the platform is a training device, as these students must demonstrate they can drive one to receive funding.

“The trial period to learn how to operate an electric chair is often quite short and the students may not develop the necessary skills in time,” says Ms Anich.

“We are extremely grateful to the engineering students for their enthusiasm and ideas in coming up with a solution to this problem.”

The platform was developed by EPICS or Engineering Projects in Community Service, which matches teams of engineering undergraduates and academic mentors with community organisations that need technical input to overcome a problem.

EPICS engineering students Wenzhe Ye, Nicholas Lee, Mohammed Abu Bakar, Ian Kim and five student volunteers designed and built the final platform in 2008 from the parts of an old motorised wheelchair donated by Allied Medical, under the supervision of mentors Dr Doug Wilson and Dr Roger Halkyard.

Dr Wilson says the device was engineered so the students could practice motorised control in their own time and pace, and in the comfort and familiarity of their own wheelchair. Experiencing self-motivated movement, especially at an early age, is believed to improve a child’s development potential.

“There are many community groups that may have the best intentions and ideas, but do not have access to the engineering skills and resources to realise them. EPICS is bridging that gap,” Dr Wilson says.

EPICS is a United States engineering programme, founded at Purdue University in 1995, and Auckland is the only university running the programme outside of America.