This week I had class during our changed class session. I was upset to miss the lead up to the make-a-thon but I expect my team members recruited great students to help us during the event.
As an update on our project, my team is working with Arielle to help improve an athlete’s grip during bad weather conditions. We have different ideas to modify the glove or modify the ring itself. However, we are not sure which of these ideas is the most feasible. Part of what we are still trying to figure out is what material would be best for our product. We also did research before spring break to understand current solutions in the market.
In order to better understand materials, we have reached out to Dr. Goodman who is a Material Science Engineering Professor. For our Technology & Management minor, we took a basic introduction to material science engineering. Dr. Goodman was our Professor and we believe he would have very valuable input for this project. Nathan emailed him on behalf of my team and his team. We are trying to schedule a meeting for next week.
For current market solutions, this was a little difficult for our group to come up with. That is because the current solution is what Arielle told us about – everything is manual and grips need to be replaced around every 3 weeks. Therefore, we research everyday wheelchairs and tried to understand what makes them work well in the rain. We assumed that grip problems would also occur in everyday wheelchairs and we were correct.
This article was really helpful and mentioned a variety of different wheelchairs that are good in the rain. One specific one I want to highlight is the Spinergy FlexRim.
This chair uses a urethane material to secure the pushrim and it provides extra traction. The flex strip provides more traction and helps users with carpel tunnel and tennis elbow! Hopefully, with the help of Dr. Goodman we can see if we can apply this technique to racing wheelchairs also.
Gies College of Business || May 2019
Supply Chain Management & Information Systems/Information Technology
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