Designing with heart

Nicholas Phillips cannot walk on his own, but his mother says it's important for her 9-year-old son to be as typical a child as possible.

With a chair scooter created for him by a group of engineering students at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, he'll be able to get out of his wheelchair more often and use his feet to propel himself around his house or on paved surfaces.

"Anything that makes him more like a typical kid is beneficial for him but makes him more approachable for other children," said his mother, Sonia Phillips, of Chattanooga. "It's a wonderful alternative. What a true blessing it is to have UTC do these projects."

The scooter chair is one of 13 projects the Introduction to Engineering Design classes have done for people or groups this semester through a grant from the Tennessee Department of Education.

UTC and Tennessee Tech are the only schools that receive grants to do such projects, said Cecelia Wigal, University of Chattanooga Foundation associate professor of engineering, and UTC is the only one at which the projects are done primarily by freshmen and sophomores.

Molly Littleton, director of the assistive technology center at Signal Centers, which coordinates the state grant, said the projects give the UTC students real-world experience.

"They see the light in the [recipient] kid's eye," she said. "That's something they can take with them."

Vincent Betro, a UTC research assistant professor in engineering, said the class allows about 60 students to think through their project in groups, meet with the client, deal with suppliers and work with a budget. They leave the class, he said, knowing they "can make the world a better place. I'm blown away with what they can do."

This is the fifth year UTC students have worked on the assistive technology projects, officials said.

Ezra Reynolds, a design specialist with Signal Centers and former UTC engineering student, said the chair for Nicholas is an Eddie Bauer car seat with a restraint system mounted on a base with wheels.

"This young man has outgrown the only commercial thing on market," he said. "He has no trunk control, and he can't sit up by himself, so this will allow him to move around in the environment [and] get some exercise."

Among other UTC projects are a walker converted to a combination walker/stroller for a South Polk Elementary School student and a pedal car converted to a walker for a 3-year-old quadriplegic amputee.

The walker for the South Polk Elementary student, adapted by UTC students Naseem Bassan Jibrin, Melvin Flowers, Kelsey Dobbs and Joe Pfeiffer, started with a pedal car with a train look. The wheels were replaced, the rear seat removed, stroller handles added and the front seat converted to be rear-facing.

The adaptation, according to Reynolds, allows the student to walk with assistance, and then, because he tires easily, to be placed in the seat and rolled.

The walker for the 3-year-old, designed by students Oleg Scotsen, Lawson Bunn, Casey Voy, Andrew Davis and Hunter Hudson, was designed to give its user motivation to walk on his prosthetic legs.

All-terrain wheels for playground use were added to the two wheels already on the walker, and elbow rests were created for him to rest his partial arms and push himself forward.

The hope for the student, said Bunn, is that he'll eventually grow out of using it and want to walk on his own.

Wigal said the projects have provided invaluable experience for the students.

"They don't have the theory [of senior-level engineering design]," she said, "but they're very creative."

Contact Clint Cooper at ccooper@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6497.