A 10-year-old girl from Lexington, Kentucky, who was blind and suffered from a crippling muscular disease, was unable to walk without assistance.
Chloe Isaacs, a therapist at Marshall Pediatric Therapy in Lexington, contacted May We Help (maywehelp.org), a nonprofit organization made up of volunteers that help in providing customized solutions for people with special needs, requesting the modification of a gait trainer/walker to accommodate blind people.
May We Help reached out to us to help design the walker. We added ultrasonic sensors that send feedback to electronic boards which then send input to the motors.
We programmed the motors to vibrate when the panel of sensors detects an object. The motors will vibrate in either the left or the right handle based on the location of the object. We worked on the design and software for most of the summer and fall, and completed it in December. On January 8th, we delivered it to the girl and her mother with the help of Marshall Pediatric Therapy.