The University of Guelph’s engineering program stands as one of the top in the country, and it’s thanks to classes like Biomechanical Engineering Design (biomechanical design) that Guelph is able to differentiate itself from the rest of the post-secondary pack.
Biomechanical design, taught by Dr. John Runciman, is a chance for Guelph’s engineers to put their skills to the test, in order to develop some form of biomedical technology with genuine, real world applications.
Megan Smith is a fourth-year biomedical engineering student currently taking biomechanical design. Alongside a team of three other engineers—Wade Sage, Chris Breadner, and Nick Stacey—Smith worked on a class project to develop a hands-free computer mouse that could be used by patients recovering from strokes.
According to Smith, the biomechanical design class is a chance for engineers to see how their work connects with real people. The main premise of the course, as explained by Smith, is to design and develop a piece of biomedical technology for St. Joseph’s Health Centre’s rehabilitation department—specifically for patients recovering from a stroke.
Individuals who suffer from a stroke typically face difficulty controlling the dominant side of their body. Even in best case circumstances, recovering from a stroke can take months. Equal amounts of rest and perseverance—as well as physical therapy—are required to regain complete control of one’s body.
Patients recovering from a stroke, therefore, often require assistance in treating the parts of their body affected by the condition.
Smith and the engineers in her group aimed to aid in the recovery process by giving stroke patients a way to use their computers.
“Usually strokes happen in older people and more and more people nowadays are using computers as a main source of communication to keep in touch with family and friends who are moving farther and farther away,” explained Smith. “So for someone whom—A—is already a senior—B—now has a stroke so are already limited for mobility, probably can’t drive anymore, and are losing a lot of their own self-reliance, also losing connections with friends via a computer is just another blow to their self-esteem and morale. To allow them to continue using a computer might be a beneficial thing.”
During the semester, students enrolled in the biomechanical design class can submit their project ideas to members of the St. Joseph’s team. If a researcher thinks that an idea is worth investigating, they can become a kind of mentor to students, in order to help the budding engineers test their ideas.
Thanks to Alison Schmalz, the occupational therapist who mentored the engineering students, and Ricky Finoro, the patient who helped test the device, Smith and her team were able to figure out how to tweak their device to make it more user-friendly and more useable overall.
“You’re trying to develop something tangible, so by the end of the semester you can give it to the rehabilitation centre and say, ‘Here is something that will help,’” explained Smith. “If they think it’s safe, they can actually use it. We were lucky enough to have been paired up with a really excellent clinician who was working as an occupational therapist at the rehabilitation centre. She’s been able to give us a lot of feedback on [ideas like], ‘No we can’t put that on a patient and yes we can put that on a patient.’”
Getting to the testing phase, however, requires the team to rethink and reconsider the parameters of their design, and the goals of their device. In Smith’s case, that meant rethinking the core mechanism of the device itself.
“The actual idea of the project is that we wanted to make a computer mouse that was completely controlled by eye motion and not controlled by hands,” said Smith.
Their motives were noble, but Smith, Breadner, Sage, and Stacey quickly realized that their goals were a little too ambitious. The problem wasn’t that they couldn’t use eye motion to remove the need for a typical mouse interface. Quite the contrary, as Smith explains, the team would’ve needed to devote hundreds of more hours than they had to code their software, or invest thousands of dollars that they didn’t have into already existing eye-tracking software.
“We’ve slightly modified the project now, so that it uses head motion instead of eye motion, which is more practical anyway, because if you look of the screen your mouse isn’t going to go off the screen,” said Smith. “So it turned out to be a good thing that [eye-tracking] didn’t work.”
Computer mice, however, do more than just move around a screen. Arguably, the most important part of a mouse interface—and the part that Smith joked could be accomplished with a head bop or a head shake—is the click.
The team is still working on perfecting their design and their device. For the moment, Smith explained that separate buttons coded for left- and right-clicking could be placed near a keyboard—on whichever side of a patient’s body that can be easily manipulated—in order to replicate a precise click.
For Smith and the rest of her fellow biomedical engineering cohorts, biomechanical design isn’t just an opportunity to gain experience building real life medical devices—it’s a chance to see the fruits of their labour in action.
Smith explained that, while other engineers typically get a chance to show off their skills and knowledge in a forum where others can appreciate their work, biomedical engineers typically build systems and mechanisms that no one really looks forward to using.
After all, the chances are high that an individual will only ever need a hands-free mouse if there’s something impeding them from using their hands to begin with.
However, the opportunity to design technology with clear and immediate medical applications—combined with the opportunity to gain direct insight from medical professionals and their patients—is often what draws students into the program.
For students looking to join the biomechanical design class, or for students looking to enroll in any of the university’s engineering streams, Smith has simple advice: Learn how to manage your time and take as many design courses as possible.
“Design is what ties the fundamental [aspects of engineering] together,” explained Smith.
SO PROUD OF YOU, MEG!!!! <3
Also love that this was written by Sameer… Gryphons unite!