With Pri, Toheeb, Gwen, and Andrew

For our semester project we decided to create a pair of everyday gloves for wheelchair users, updated with some 21st century technology. This idea took life back during our first meeting in the FabLab when I overheard Vishal talking to Colin about some new conductive PLA. My intentions going into this class were primarily sport based applications: what could I make to benefit our wheelchair track and roadracing team? That’s when the idea hit me.. Take Arielle’s 3D printed racing gloves and add some tech to them so we could boost our training productivity. The idea here was to use the conductive PLA to somehow include a force-sensor, accelerometer, and a bluetooth transmitting device. The goal was to be able to reliably measure peak resultant force in the x, y, and z dimensions, along with speed, contact and push time, and stroke frequency.

To make this idea more of a reality, I contacted a professor here on campus who was on the track team himself, and whose area of expertise lies within measuring the effects of adaptive equipment on the body. He has used a similar device attached to the handrings of a racing chair to measure these areas. He felt that our idea was awesome and attainable, just not in the timeframe that we have available to us. In conversation, he mentioned that one of his upcoming studies was going to include the forces used for transferring in and out of a wheelchair, but he was not satisfied with instrumentation currently in use. And this is where our idea really took shape. Our focus now is to create an everyday glove with the same technology that can be one day used in a racing glove.

As far as progress goes, we have a working force sensor, and a survey that is ready to be distributed. We are well on the way to having a fully functional prototype!