Engineering Design

What problem in your community will your team attempt to solve using the engineering design process?

We are trying to limit toe-walking in youth, especially toddlers. The toe-walking has longterm effects including their Achilles-Tendon not fully developing. In extreme cases, a surgery may be required to correct this problem. By correcting this problem in youth early on, we can prevent them from having to undergo this painful and costly surgery. Our method of measuring the pressure in the feet reminds the parents and youth alike with a light or other mechanism when ample pressure is applied on the heel rather than the toe. If we are successful in helping the patient, we save their parents thousands of dollars as well as the stress that parents experience when a child has to be operated on. The child benefits far more than the parents though, as the surgery for idiopathic toe walking is very painful and has a long recovery time. If the child corrects their problems prior to requiring surgery, we consider our work to be complete. The engineering design process will guide us on this journey by allowing us to create prototypes along the way for our project. All of our work has been gathered here so it is easy for one to read.

Research your problem. You must learn more about the problem you are trying to solve and also what possible solutions already exist. Find AT LEAST 10 different resources and list them here. They should include books, periodicals (magazines, journals, etc.), websites, experts, and any other resources you can think of. Be specific when listing them, and do not list your search engine (Google, etc.) as a resource.What problem in your community will your team attempt to solve using the engineering design process?

Explain what you learned from your research. What did you find out about your problem that you didn’t know before? What kinds of possible solutions already exist? Be sure to put this in your OWN words, do not just copy and paste information. Also, be sure to cite your sources.

Several of the sources listed in the Google Doc above mention some solutions including using a cast, going to see a physical therapist, and having a surgery. If the use of a cast or the visiting of a physical therapist does not result in the strengthening of the achilles tendon for the child, then the surgery is necessary. This surgery is expensive and causes the child to be put in a wheelchair for three months following the operation.

Before beginning research for our project, every member of the group besides Twarner491 did not know about idiopathic toe walking at all. Twarner491 had known a fellow student at the school he attended prior to attending Charlotte Latin in 2018. Upon hearing about this, the group instantly knew that we would like to make our project on this issue. The group began researching and discovered many things about idiopathic toe walking. Our results can be viewed on the home page of the site, where many powerpoint presentations are displayed, created by the many group members about different aspects of idiopathic toe walking in its entirety.

What MUST be a part of your solution? This is called the criteria. What does your solution need to have in order to solve the problem? (NOTE: Don’t discuss a specific solution here, just the characteristics of a good solution).

A good solution to a problem must be small, lightweight, portable, and most importantly cost-effective. This is important because if something is not small or lightweight, especially in the case of our product, it is not convenient. If a product is to be worn by children, it has to be as comfortable as possible. Comfort means that a user will not become frustrated with their device and remove it; and as a result, reducing the effectiveness. of the device entirely. If it is cost-effective, it must be accessible to everyone. While a solution must be cost effective, enough money should be put into the project to make it so the problem that it is addressing actually does get solved in the first place. If too much focus is put on making a solution cheaper, then the solution might not properly fix the problem that the device is attempting to solve. This can be detrimental to the overall goal of the project. While spending too little on a solution can be detrimental, spending too much on the project makes it unavailable to many people who need the solution. This means that one must find a perfect balance of cost and effectivity when solving a problem, which makes the product very user-friendly. If a certain solution is not user-friendly, then the owner of the product might not bother setting it up and beginning to use it. A good solution must also be a good correction or preventative measure to a problem that truly needs to be fixed. In North Carolina, people say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" This can be applied to the engineering design process in many ways. One application for this statement is to look at a problem and decide whether or not it truly does need to be fixed. If the answer is yes, one can then research for already existing solutions to the specific problem. If a solution already exists that is proven to be effective, then you do not need to further fix this problem if it is not absolutely necessary. However, if there is not a pre-existing solution or if one believe that a new solution is necessary to a problem, then the solution should be solved with the above parameters kept in mind at all times throughout the process. If a product is not simply made to make profit off of and the owner of the device must actually do something with the product after purchasing it, then the device must be easy to use. In most cases, a product is simply meant to be sold. For example, if a phone is sold, then the manufacturer does not have to worry about what the owner does after purchasing. In another example, ff the product is a solution to a problem, the manufacturer must make sure that whoever buys it does indeed take the time to configure their product and begin using it, and for this the product must be able to be set up by anyone. Once a solution contains the above elements in perfect balance with each other, then the solution can be deemed effective and presented to the wider market of users that truly have a need for the solution which will assist them in their daily lives.

What limits are there on your solution? These are called constraints. Does it need to be a certain size? A certain weight? Is the cost a factor? Write down all of the limits on your solution.

Because our design must fit inside of a shoe that is designed to fit a 5-6 year old there are many constraints for our design. Size is a major constraint on our solution because of the area we are trying to fit the FLORA board into. Weight is also important because a shoe must be lightweight and comfortable especially for a child that would wear our device all the time. We want the experience of wearing our device to be as unnoticeable for the child as possible in the field of weight and discomfort; however, we know that the difference will be felt positively later in life for anyone who wears a Toe Hawks device. The cost of a FLORA board is roughly $19 - so cost is not a major factor in the design of our device since the rest of our project is mostly made up of code and small wires which can mainly be classified as intellectual property, for they were typed on a keyboard using our fingers. Another constraint on our solution is the fact that it needs to be a reminder to its user without being incredibly potent to them to the point that it effects their daily life. The light on the device serves as a reminder, but the question is always present - is a light truly enough to help? We ended up choosing to use a light because it was easier to code and also it is not large enough to be an annoyance to the user of the device. While these limits are important to consider we believe that our final model is a perfect balance of all these constrains taken into consideration. Our end result is a culmination of four immensely capable minds holding the above constrains in mind whenever applying even one neuron to the Toe Hawks.

Based on your criteria and constraints, what is your proposed solution to the problem you chose? Explain what it will look like and how it will work. If you can, include a detailed, labeled drawing.

In our product we choose to address the problem of Idiopathic Toe Walking. This is a condition more prominent in children with autism, and can possibly lead to expensive surgery that has a recovery time of nearly three months. The recovery period for this surgery involves the patient being placed in a wheelchair for the three months following the surgery. The surgery typically entails the lengthening of the Achilles Tendon to make it more comfortable and easier for children to place pressure on their heels rather than on their toes. Our Product is an insole for these children shoes. It will replace the stock insole, and contain a sensor rig that reminds the child to put weight on his or her heels when on their tiptoes for a long period of time. To see a model of our insole, check out the product media page where Twarner491 has posted videos of himself rendering the product in Fusion 360.

How will you test your solution? The BEST way to test your solution is to build a working model or a prototype that you can actually use. Or you can guess how your solution will work BASED ON your research. Which method will you use and why?

We used a combination of the two methods outlined in the question above the following paragraphs. Instead of putting the insole in the shoe, we thought it would be easier during testing to simply push on the insole and the sensor with our hands while it was out of the shoe. This would have given us similar results because we could easily add or take away pressure without going through the difficult process of wearing the shoe around and then testing. When testing with our hands we could simply see the amounts of pressure that were applied to the sensor through the Arduino serial monitor. This ease of testing allowed us to quickly change the code to fit the values produced by the sensors.

Our guess of how the solution would work based on our months of research and work is that the insole when inserted into a shoe would work how it is supposed to. The insole is supposed to work by putting a Velostat pressure sensor in the heel of a shoe in order to monitor the amount of pressure that children suffering from Idiopathic Toe Walking are placing on their heels. We want to remind these children to put as much pressure as possible onto their heels as possible in order to prevent the expensive and painful surgery that they must undergo if they do not correct these problems in their youth. When enough pressure is being placed on the sensor, the LED will turn off. And when not enough pressure is being placed on the insole, the LED turns on as a reminder for the child to place more pressure on their heel rather than continuing to place pressure on their toe per usual.

We also believe that before testing in an actual patient with idiopathic toe walking, we should make sure that our product actually does function the way it is supposed to. If we can achieve the same readings from simply placing our hands on the pressure sensor, our group as a whole has come to the general consensus that it is unnecessary to test on an individual when we can test with more accuracy and speed in our school's FabLab.

If you built a prototype or model, explain how you built your prototype or model, step-by-step including all safety precautions. If you guessed how your solution would work BASED ON your research, explain important information from your research that you used to prove how your solution would work and be sure to cite your sources.

We built the prototypes using soldering irons and our very own FabLab. For the soldering irons, we had to put on goggles and always make sure that the soldering iron is not left unattended. We also made sure to keep circulation in the air going by opening windows and opening doors. We also used lead-free solder which is safer than inhaling standard solder. We used a soldering iron to make an electrical connection between the wires and the FLORA board. These were the wires that were also taped to either side of the Velsotat to send the readings to the FLORA board itself. The FLORA board then decided, based off of the code, whether the reading was higher or lower than the set threshold. If it was higher, the user would be alerted that there was too much pressure on the toes. The safety procedures in the FabLab included wearing goggles, for the wall with all the materials is right next to where students solder. This means that we always had to stay safe, for there was a chance that someone was in there soldering.

Explain how you tested your prototype or model. Be sure to include every step of your testing including all safety precautions that were taken. If not stated it will be assumed no safety precautions were taken. If you are using research to guess how your solution will work, explain step-by-step how it will work and why.

The way we tested our prototypes were just to take the insole and put our hand on the sensor. We moved our hand around and changed the amount of pressure that was applied. This let us see if the sensor actually was picking up the correct amount of pressure and if the LED turned on. No safety procedures were required for this because we were simply pushing our hand onto an insole.

What problems did you find with your solution? Be specific since you will need to redesign based on these problems.

One of the first problems that we encountered with our solution was that the Arduino board was not presenting the right values in the on board serial monitor. This was a terrible issue for the project since it would be impossible for it to function without the right values coming out of the readings. We solved this by editing the code to make it present more accurate readings, causing the LED's on the FLORA board to respond to the pressure readings, which was the original goal of our project when we set out on this long, yet extremely rewarding journey. Another issue was while we were testing, we only connected the wires to the FLORA board using solder. Even though solder does offer an electrical connection, the physical connection is not strong. Also, the wires themselves had to be stripped to expose the wires inside, however these themselves are not strong and these were the only thing connecting the FLORA board to the wires.

Describe all of the changes you made to your prototype or model (or proposed prototype) after your first test. Why will these changes improve your solution?

Some of the changes included switching from an Arduino board to a FLOR board. There were several advantages of using the FLORA board including its size and weight. By decreasing the weight of the model as a whole, we believe that our product would become immensely more comfortable for the user of the product. Because our product needs to be worn at all times by the user which is supposed to be a child, we believe that comfort is a must. Comfort is necessary in this situation particularly more than it is necessary in other situations simply because of the age of the children who are supposed to be wearing our device. If the device is not comfortable, then a child might not understand its purpose and tear it off in anger and the anguish the device is causing the child. In short, we do not want this to happen. Another change

Present the data you collected from your tests or from your research. If you tested a prototype or model then include all of the numbers you gathered during your testing and all observations you made. Use of graphs and charts is HIGHLY encouraged. If you used research to prove how your solution would work, be sure to include all of the numbers, charts, and graphs you used to make your case.

For our project, there was no data to gather.

What are your potential sources of error? Remember, this doesn’t mean "Did everything work?", all tests have potential sources of error, so make sure you understand what that means. Explain how these sources of error could have affected your results.

One of the potential sources of error is the product breaking. In its current state, the product is very flimsy and could easily break if it is bent in an awkward way. Bending could possibly result in the solder connections snapping off of the FLORA board, which would make the device useless in its entirety. This could be corrected by making stronger solder connections to the board or using a strong form of tape to secure the solder connection to the board in the case of a large shaking motion to the board. This way, the board would be able to withstand much more shaking and abuse from the user. We would need to add this iteration of the device because if the device is meant to be mounted to a shoe, it needs to be able to withstand mass amounts of banging and shaking for it to still be useful to its owner. A test that could add errors to our results would be a wrong value in the code for the amount of pressure placed on the sensor. If we had a different value for the code then the light might turn on at times when it is not necessary to light on.

What conclusions can you draw based on the data you gathered during your tests?

For our project, there was no data to gather.