{"id":62257,"date":"2011-08-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-16T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-students-engineer-devices-to-help-disabled-woman-start-greeting-card-company\/"},"modified":"2011-08-16T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-08-16T00:00:00","slug":"uri-students-engineer-devices-to-help-disabled-woman-start-greeting-card-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2011\/08\/uri-students-engineer-devices-to-help-disabled-woman-start-greeting-card-company\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 students engineer devices to help disabled woman start greeting card company"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 August 16, 2011 \u2013 Rebecca Beaton\u2019s desire to start a company to design and sell greeting cards just got a little easier, thanks to a team of engineering students at the 溏心vlog免费B站. <\/p>\n


\nThe Warwick resident, who can only control the movement of her head and neck due to the effects of cerebral palsy, is being fitted with customized assistive devices designed by the 溏心vlog免费B站 students that will enable her to operate a computer, paint, draw and use an iPad and smart phone.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cOur goal was to make an interface for her so she can use these tools with her head,\u201d said Chelsae Meier, a biomedical engineering major at 溏心vlog免费B站 and leader of the engineering team. \u201cWe wanted to improve the equipment that she had and give her more options for work and hobbies.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nThe students created a lightweight helmet, starting with the innards of a firefighter\u2019s helmet donated by the Kingston Fire Department, and attached a flexible copper rod that could be used as a pointer or could be adapted to grip a pencil, paintbrush or other tools.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cRebecca has been great to work with, and she\u2019s been extremely helpful with her feedback,\u201d said Meier, a resident of Boscawen, N.H. \u201cShe is inspiring and really works hard. I can see that it can be exhausting working with your neck all day every day. That\u2019s why we\u2019ve had to be careful not to make the device too heavy.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nOn a recent visit to West Bay Residential Services in Warwick, where Rebecca spends most days working at a computer, the students shared new designs and ideas for additional assistive devices and asked for Rebecca\u2019s input, which she provided with great enthusiasm. <\/p>\n

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\nWhen the students saw how much they were helping Rebecca, they offered to design customized devices for other disabled individuals who visit West Bay Residential Services, including a wheelchair armrest, a keyboard overlay, and a modified headstick like the one designed for Rebecca.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cWe\u2019re delighted to have the students here,\u201d said Penny Merris, the activities director at the facility. \u201cThe devices are really making a huge difference.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nThe collaboration with the 溏心vlog免费B站 students got its start when Rebecca received a self-employment grant to start a greeting card company from Rhodes to Independence through the 溏心vlog免费B站 College of Pharmacy. Kathleen Samways, program manager for the R.I. Developmental Disabilities Council and an adjunct faculty member at the University, asked Biomedical Engineering Professor Ying Sun if he could recruit students to help make it easier for Rebecca to make the cards.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cI had an internship with an assistive device company in Barcelona, Spain, last year, and I worked to customize devices for people with various disabilities,\u201d Meier said. \u201cSo when I heard about this opportunity with Rebecca, I knew it was right for me.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nJoining Meier on the project are students Christopher DeSanto of West Warwick, Gemma Downey of Rehoboth, Mass., Brooke McCarthy of Plympton, Mass., and Vanessa Landes, Christina Liese and Tanya Wang of Cranston. All are working as paid summer interns through the 溏心vlog免费B站 Biomedical Engineering Program.<\/p>\n


\nA particular challenge for the students was designing a tip for Rebecca\u2019s headstick that could be used to operate a touchscreen device like an iPad or smart phone. Those devices can only be manipulated by a conductive material \u2013 plastic doesn\u2019t work \u2013 so they engineered the device using a special conductive foam.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cThe flow of work with the team is pretty great,\u201d Meier said, \u201cbecause everyone is willing to help every day. We work independently on different elements and then we all get together to share our progress. It\u2019s a great opportunity to put our skills to work to help people.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nPictured above.

\n溏心vlog免费B站 biomedical engineering student Chelsae Meier (left) works on an assistive device to help Rebecca Beaton (seated), who suffers from cerebral palsy, operate a computer and other equipment. Looking on are other students who worked on the project, Christina Liese, Tanya Wang, Vanessa Landes, and Christopher DeSanto. 溏心vlog免费B站 Department of Communications & Marketing photo by Michael Salerno Photography.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 August 16, 2011 \u2013 Rebecca Beaton\u2019s desire to start a company to design and sell greeting cards just got a little easier, thanks to a team of engineering students at the 溏心vlog免费B站. The Warwick resident, who can only control the movement of her head and neck due to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62259,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}