Hard work paid off for the Carleton Ravens Racing team, which took home special honours at Canadian and American Formula race car competitions this year.

Ravens Racing includes two teams: one is comprised of 27 fourth-year undergraduate engineering students who receive a credit for creating and testing their components on a Formula Hybrid all-wheel drive car; the other team includes more than 40 volunteer students from all academic backgrounds who create and test their components on a gas-powered Formula race car.

“I think we did very well this year,” says Kenneth Chow, Ravens Racing team leader. “This is the first year our hybrid competed after we developed the car for three years. When we went to compete, it got first place.”

Chow says the team created improved parts and processes for the race cars this year – which helped them succeed when the Ravens Racing Hybrid team competed in the 2013 Formula Hybrid competition in New Hampshire between April 20 and May 2. The team took third place in design, second in marketing, and sixth in endurance – placing sixth overall.

Carleton’s next victory took place at the 2013 Formula SAE Michigan competition from May 8 to 11, where the volunteer team faced off against 122 international teams.

Chow says the volunteer team did an outstanding job – coming in ninth place in the cost event, 34th place in marketing, and tying 68th in design.

“We went from four to five people on the team last year, to more than 40 this year. So this was a huge step forward,” says Chow.

Both Ravens Racing teams competed at the 2013 Formula North competition in Barrie, Ont., from May 23 to 26. The Hybrid team members earned first place overall in their category, and in the acceleration and endurance events. The volunteer team placed 23rd in the competitive combustion class – facing the top teams from the Formula SAE Michigan competition.

Ravens Racing members will be demonstrating their cars at various events this summer, including at the Ottawa Ferrari Festival, which takes place June 15.

For more information on the teams, visit: ravensracing.com.

In the product design category, winners are:

1st place: Inclusive Moto, Tiziano Cousineau; Carleton University
3rd place (tie): Skate Soccer; Jeff Burgers, Carleton University
3rd place (tie): Harambee, Ruby Hadley, Carmen Liu, Andrew Theobald & Alyssa Wongkee; Carleton University

Fourth-year Carleton student Tiziano Cousineau took first prize in the Product Design category for his Inclusive Moto project. The project aims to make off-road motorcycling accessible for those with lower limb disabilities. Cousineau designed a solution that gives a disabled rider complete control of the motorcycle, as well as the ability to ride independently without an assistant holding the motorcycle upright when starting and stopping.

“I was inspired by people who have been injured and paralyzed riding motorcycles,” says Cousineau, himself a motorcycle enthusiast. “I started to think about how I could give them the opportunity to continue riding. From there, I realized that I could help give this opportunity to those who had never been able to ride a motorcycle because of their disability. So the project evolved toward being universal and inclusive for everyone.”

Cousineau attributes part of the project’s success to the training he received in the Industrial Design program at Carleton.

“Carleton’s Industrial Design program really puts an emphasis on exploring a problem,” says Cousineau. “I was actually able to consult with the disabled community by speaking with adaptive sports participants, so in the end I was able to learn from the people I was designing for.”

Tying for third place was a project by fourth-year students Ruby Hadley, Carmen Liu, Alyssa Wongkee and Andrew Theobald. They developed a variety of assistive devices for users in rural Uganda requiring better mobility so that they can participate in small businesses. Also in third place was Jeff Burgers for his project Skate Soccer.

Electronics students Tim Inglis, Alim Baytekin, Natalie Lavasseur and Alborz Erfani took top spot. This is the second consecutive win for Carleton. The first runner up was the industrial design team of Ruby Hadley, Carmen Liu and Andrew Theobald that developed a variety of assistive devices for users in rural Uganda requiring better mobility so that they could participate in small business. The second runner up was Neil Voornneveld, whose navigation system alerts users to obstacles in their environment and provides location on command via audio.

“The 3-D prosthetic hand is an extraordinary invention that could make the world far more accessible for anyone missing a limb,” says Alastair Summerlee, Chair of COU and President of the University of Guelph.

The prosthetic hand is more nimble when it comes to opening doors or picking up small items such as eggs, and costs considerably less than the average of $15,000 for prosthetic limbs, its inventors say.

Inglis and Baytekin will continue to work on the prosthetic hand over the summer. They have received support from Tom Skinner, MEng/72, who donated funds to run a two-year pilot project that will help engineering students begin to commercialize a fourth-year group project.

About IDeA

Ontario universities are committed to the provincial goal of creating an accessible environment on campus, and in all walks of life. The IDeA competition asks Ontario undergraduate students to use their creativity to come up with ideas to turn that goal into reality.

This year, 18 of 21 Ontario universities participated in the contest, which is supported through the Ontario government’s EnAbling Change Program and COU’s partners at the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario in the Ministry of Economic Development, Trade and Employment.

Next year’s competition will focus on parasport and active living in honour of the upcoming Pan American and Para-Pan American games taking place in Ontario.

Thanks to a donation by Tom Skinner, MEng/72, who donated funds to run a two-year pilot project that will help engineering students begin to commercialize a fourth-year group project, Inglis and Baytekin will be able to take the project further. Inglis also received a Wes Nicol award through Carleton Entrepreneurs to explore commercialization of the technology. The project previously won the Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO) competition this year.

With the cost of a modern myoelectric prosthetic hand in Canada ranging from $15,000 to $50,000, cost is a significant barrier to ownership for many amputees in Canada and abroad. Additionally, hand functionality is limited among these more moderately priced devices. Many of these hands only have the ability to open and close in a single grip. Higher functionality, such as independently actuated fingers capable of many grips comes at an even higher price.

The team focused on designing an afforable prosthetic with emphasis on the design of the mechanical hand, intelligent motor control logic, haptic feedback implementation, and integration of all of the individual system components into a functional prototype.

To develop an inexpensive electromechanical hand that was a reasonable analog of a human hand and an inexpensive EMG-based control  platform, the team decided that the mechanical hand components should be created using a 3D printer. The EMG control platform is comprised of inexpensive, readily available components.

The 3D-printed hand prototype was modeled, printed and assembled for less than $250. The hand contains over 30 components, including 15 unique printed components. It is actuated with high-torque hobby servos that are controlled by pulse width modulated (PWM) signals regulated by the microcontroller. The EMG interface works by acquiring differential signals from muscle impulses in the residual limb of the user. Those signals are then amplified, and passed to a high-resolution analog to digital converter (ADC). The ADC then outputs the signals over aserial peripheral interface (SPI) to the microcontroller. Control logic embedded in the microcontroller captures combinations of muscle impulses. A pressure sensor on the gripping surface of the prosthetic thumb provides feedback to the microcontroller to control the pressure applied when the prosthetic hand grips an object. A haptic feedback system creates vibration in response to a successfully received command.

The prosthetic hand is nimble when it comes to opening doors or picking up small items, such as eggs. It has a firm, but non-crushing grip.

The control system is customizable for each user. A child who receives her first myoelectric arm at the age of three will use a simple control scheme that requires one or two electrodes and only a single opcode. As the child grows, she will be able to incrementally increase the number of channels and the number of opcodes used, increasing the functionality of her hand.

Read the full report.

A group of four undergraduate industrial design students are crediting their final-year project, which had them visiting “end users” in Africa, with going beyond their expectations.

The four worked in close collaboration with local stakeholders in Kasese, Uganda, to improve the design of products such as a hand-operated tricycle for the disabled in rural Uganda.

“When we started, we had a lot of assumptions and our heads were filled with questions,” says student Ruby Hadley. “Sending a drawing to Uganda and then seeing it as a reality when I arrived and being able to work with the manufacturer (welder and artisan Kio Muikiika), was a learning experience so much more than I expected.”

The Design Innovation for Disability in Kasese project, funded by a $50,000 grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), brought together the students, their instructor Stephen Field, Bjarki Hallgrimsson, acting director of the School of Industrial Design, Navin Parekh of CanUgan Disability Support Project, Carleton’s READ Initiative (Research, Education, Accessibility and Design), and experts with experience in design and disability for low-income communities and developing countries, specifically Noel Wilson of Catapult Design and Aaron Wieler of Whirlwind Wheelchairs.

“There’s a movement in the design field called ‘Design for the Other 90 Per Cent,’” says project leader Hallgrimsson, who saw the opportunity to work with Parekh and the Kasese District Union of Persons with Disabilities (KADUPEDI).

“We applied for funding from IDRC and approached Stephen Field with the idea for a fourth-year project. Then we brought in the experts (Wilson and Wieler) to gain insight.”

It was important, Hallgrimsson stresses, that the end users of the products be involved in the design process, and so he and Field, the students and Parekh made the trek to Uganda in February.

Encountering the manufacturers and users of her design who were “half a world away” was “something very real and new” for student Alyssa Wongkee, who started to work on improvements for the existing design on the computer (CAD).

Carmen Liu, who designed a maize mill for Ugandans who earn their living grinding nuts and maize, found it challenging to design outside her comfort zone. “I definitely sharpened my skill of working and communicating with people from different cultures, backgrounds and needs. I like the idea of designing in a new way. It has widened my scope.”

The students went straight to work in his first week of school by building a full-scale prototype using a quarter-scale model of Kio’s design. To better understand the issues of the eventual users, Andrew Theobald bound his legs and initiated a coffee-selling business pedalling around the campus on a prototype tricycle.

“Going to Uganda was eye-opening,” says Theobald. “It was so different from what I expected. I fell in love with the country. I saw so many opportunities for someone in our profession, not only to design as a humanitarian effort, but for the many needs that can be solved through the application of design.”

KADUPEDI co-ordinator Balouku Peter, who visited Carleton’s campus at the end of April, points out that the students’ designs are “improving the economy of the people. The minority tend to be left out and sometimes things are done for us, but they’re not the way we need them done. Working directly with the people has made a lot of difference.”

The students returned from Uganda with a new understanding, says Field. “It’s been a huge learning curve and an incredible learning opportunity. What these four have started is going to be a hard act to follow.”

READ director Dean Mellway explains the concept of the initiative “is to build Carleton’s leadership in the disability area, and demonstrate that we have an expertise and are willing to collaborate.”

Hallgrimsson adds, “Our biggest challenge will be making the project sustainable on a year-to-year basis. We have really set something in motion. What the students did blew me away.”

Left to right: Al Perks, PEng, Judge Convener; Tyler Clancy, student, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering; Frank Hendriksen, PEng, Student Papers Co-chair; Tim Inglis, student, Department of Electronics; Kim Eaton, PEng, Judge; Cynthia Cruickshank, assistant professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, PEO Student Papers Night Organizer

Congratulations to Tim Inglis (biomedical and electrical engineering) and Tyler Clancy (mechanical engineering) on their winning presentations at the PEO Papers Night on April 9. Inglis was awarded the best overall paper prize for the Bionic Hand and Clancy won for the best technical presentation for Flexures for the Formula Hybrid Car. The judges were significantly impressed both with the superb engineering technical aspects of their projects and their ability to present this to an audience in a fashion such that non-experts could understand their work.

Prof Cynthia Cruickshank, the faculty member responsible for the Carleton team, now has two consecutive wins after our team recaptured the Tom Foulkes Trophy, awarded by the Ottawa Chapter of PEO.

The Bionic Hand project, a 3D printed hand with intelligent EMG control, also took first place in the Department of Electronics, and second place in IEEE Ottawa Section – Carleton Branch.

Photos: Chris Roussakis

A team of industrial design students at Carleton University are work at perfecting a hand-cranked bike built for Ugandans with disabilities by their fellow countryman, Nelson “Kio” Mukiika.

“We were amazed he was producing these bikes for $170 a piece,” said Dean Mellway, Acting Director of the Research, Education, Accessibility and Design initiative at Carleton University. “He’s built over 50 of them from old bikes now in his local machine shop in Kasese, one of the poorest areas of Uganda.”

A little more than a year ago, Mellway found out about Mukiika through an Ottawa initiative called CanUgan which had been helping pay for the bikes. Mellway thought Carleton’s students could help and got the International Development Research Centre on board.

“We took the design and tried to learn what it would be like to be Kio,” said Andrew Theobald, a fourth year industrial design student working on the project. “He’s a self-taught welder and works with little equipment. He doesn’t work with blueprints. He uses his fingers to measure.”

Industrial design students Andrew Theobald, Alyssa Wongkee, Ruby Hadley and Carmen Liu are working to perfect a hand-cranked tricycle for disabled Ugandans.

Roughly 2.4 million people with disabilities in Uganda live in chronic poverty without the means of making a livelihood. The bikes, Mellway said, give them mobility and the chance to earn wages.

To design a bike like the one created by Mukiika, the students had to limit their options. “We would usually create parts to exact measure,” said Theobald. “But we built this prototype with hacksaws. We wanted to learn a design empathy with Kio.”

Each bike he builds is a one-off since they’re made from the scraps of broken bikes. “I looked into how he manufactures the tricycles,” said Alyssa Wongkee, “to see if he could bring some of the principles of mass manufacturing into his process to make it faster and easier to build.”

The students have already come up with a major design improvement, said course instructor Stephen Field. “They figured out you could develop a new backbone for the steering and chain.”

Next Monday, the students will be meeting with design experts from San Francisco and will be joined by Ugandans participating in the project via. Skype.

“These are very smart people in Uganda and we’re trying to design with them, not designing for them,” said Field. “They’ve done so much with so little.”

As part of Team Ontario, with Queen’s University and Algonquin College, Carleton was selected to compete in the 2013 Solar Decathlon in Irvine, California. The multi-disciplinary team is building an affordable house that generates more electricity than it consumes. Two years of research, testing and building will culminate in the solar-powered house being disassembled and shipped to California for the 10-day competition, where it will be judged for cost effectiveness, energy efficiency and attractiveness. The house will blend affordability, consumer appeal and design excellence with optimal energy production and maximum efficiency.

Team Ontario will design and build a custom house, create models for measuring performance and, through research and testing, determine the most efficient systems and materials for insulation, hot water, appliances, home entertainment, and storm water use. In the process, students will have applied their classroom knowledge to create viable, real-world solutions for energy-efficient housing—and inspired the public to demand more from the next generation of homes.

Your support will advance intelligent housing design for the future by providing essential materials and research time to Team Ontario. Make a gift today to help Team Ontario shape the future.