This summer, 22 Newton high school students worked for eight weeks in a Northeastern University program to design, build, and deliver five inventions to address needs of patients in The Boston Home, of children at New England Pediatric Care, and of night nurses at Brigham and Womens Hospital.
The 22 students from two Newton robotics teams — 18 from the Newton LigerBots and 4 from the Newton Lazer Robotics — delivered the following:
- A wheelchair radar for a cognitively challenged, wheelchair-bound, blind child looking for some independence
- An accessible corn-hole shooter for patients with Multiple Sclerosis
- A switch-activated portable catapult to enable severely disabled children to play
- A universal robotic arm to enable children with severe cognitive and physical disabilities to engage in extracurricular activities.
- A handsfree, lightweight, sanitary light to enable night nurses to perform their duties in poorly lit conditions without disturbing their patients
This Northeastern program, Enabling Engineering, combines a class and a nonprofit organization to support students — high schoolers in the summer and college students during the school year — in delivering inexpensive, accessible, and empowering solutions to those in need.
Each project was given a budget of $700 for R&D, building, and delivery — and all but one team delivered on time and under budget, complete with instruction manuals and maintenance documentation.
In the previous summer, nine Newton students in the program delivered two projects:
- A pelvic model for use in nursing education that gained much praise at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and
- A stable camera mount for wheelchair-bound journalists in Africa, which surpassed expectations. (A previous version was unstable and inflexible yet cost nearly $1,000 to produce. The Enabling Engineering students delivered a solution that was easily reproduced for under $100, including shipping to Africa.)
This year, the program received rave reviews as well from participating students. “We had a small team and a big challenge. Our experience on LigerBots definitely prepared us for the time crunch, but we really got the opportunity to try out different aspects of building, CAD, electronics, and programming. I got to try things I didn’t normally do during the [robotics team] season,” said Yonatan, a rising senior at Newton South.
Jerry G, a rising sophomore, said “We learned so much this summer! Thank you, Northeastern, for this opportunity!”
Greer Tan Swiston is a volunteer mentor for the Newton Ligerbots.
