Overview

• Project 4 revolves around the IMPACT Initiative Project. As McMaster students, it is our responsibility to try and help improve the daily lives of our clients by designing a system or device that can aid them.
• This year, our client is Tiffany, a 33-year-old woman who was diagnosed with Spina Bifida at birth. She is also diagnosed with Hydrocephalus, as a result, she is paralyzed from the waist down and has limited mobility in her non-dominant hand.
• Tiffany uses a power wheelchair to move around and has a nurse and personal support worker (PSW) who help her with daily tasks such as dressing and showering.
• She uses a motorized wheelchair to get around every day. This chair requires doors to be a certain width to fit through and also works best when the ground is flat and smooth.
• Snow and slush can make the wheels skid or damage the chair internally.
• Tiffany also works at Walmart where she stocks shelves, some of which are higher than she can reach with her arms.
• Currently, Tiffany has a reaching grabber arm that allows her to pick up and place items; however, this tool cannot carry items at work, and she has to have someone help her.

Problem Statement

“Design a device that can grab various items, assisting Tiffany with everyday tasks and responsibilities. This long-lasting design will allow her to access things out of reach and grab a wide range of objects. The design should be lightweight, portable, durable, and easy to use in places Tiffany often goes.”

After interviewing Tiffany, our group decided to move forward with the idea of innovating a reacher grabber that would better suit Tiffany’s needs and circumstances.

Key Objectives

Constraints

• Range (Allow easy access to hard-to-reach places)

• Portable (Needs to be portable as she will carry it with her)

• Variety (Should be able to grab a variety of different objects)

• Durability (Client had issues with devices in the past breaking)

• Simplicity (Doesn’t need batteries or electricity to be operated)

• Weight (device shouldn't be heavy and uncomfortable to use - 3lbs max)

• Cost (Should remain at a reasonable price to justify its benefit over current alternatives)

Final Outcome

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkOYVe_l1W4&ab_channel=NabilMemon

Project Timeline

Final Gantt Chart

Team’s Work and Personal Contributions

Initial Brainstorming

Our group began by determining what Tiffany would benefit the most from and eventually came to the decision of a better teacher grabber. We then began to brainstorm our objectives and constraints based on Tiffany’s current reacher grabber and what she would be using it for.

Our group then began to develop a testing plan to measure our objectives and constraints. This would help us determine how effective our prototypes are, allowing us to make improvements to better help Tiffany.

In addition, each member of our group did a research summary on different aspects of our project. This spanned from researching patents to Tiffany’s specific conditions. This helped our group gain more insight into the design process and how to create better solutions.

Our group then created a functional analysis to determine what type of mechanism would best suit our reacher grabber. We then each created two sketches using different means.

Personal Sketches