UNF professor patents revolutionary ride-on mobility device for kids with disabilities

Dr. Juan Aceros, College of North Florida engineering affiliate professor, has been granted two new U.S. patents which have the potential to assist hundreds of youngsters with disabilities attain a better diploma of freedom and luxury over conventional mobility units, akin to wheelchairs.

The patents are for a singular modular ride-on mobility system outfitted with proportional management switches. The analysis was funded partly by the Nationwide Institute of Well being and a UNF Basis Board grant.

These innovations are over a decade within the making. Aceros, with the UNF engineering program, and Dr. Mary Lundy, affiliate professor emerita of bodily remedy, started the Adaptive Toy Venture in 2013. The venture turned a well-liked interdisciplinary class, the place UNF bodily remedy college students would assess the wants of particular person youngsters and engineering college students would create personalized ride-on toy automobiles tailor-made to satisfy the precise remedy wants of every pediatric affected person who participated in this system.

Every year, this system would culminate in a heart-warming giveaway occasion the place the households of the pediatric sufferers would come collectively because the personalised mobility units have been unveiled. The tears of pleasure on the mother and father’ faces and the grins, laughter and pleasure of the youngsters as they rode their automobiles for the primary time have been all the time unforgettable. The venture made nationwide information, together with a Christmas Day characteristic on CNN in 2016.

Aceros is now collaborating with Dr. Guilherme Cesar, UNF bodily remedy assistant professor, to additional increase this profitable initiative by trying on the biomechanical results underpinning using ride-on mobility units. They just lately obtained a prestigious award from the Basis for Bodily Remedy Analysis to check the influence on steadiness management after intervention with novel stand-on ride-on energy mobility units for youngsters with cerebral palsy.

Typical ride-on units will not be designed for long-term use and are sometimes perceived as toys relatively than important instruments. In consequence, these units are sometimes small, cramped, non-adjustable and outfitted with conventional management mechanisms which may be inoperable or extraordinarily difficult to make use of and revel in. Additionally, youngsters and younger adults sometimes outgrow standard mobility units each few years, and even months. This forces households to often improve to bigger fashions when youngsters now not match of their earlier units. The financial burden of continually having to buy new units usually causes youngsters to go with out the important mobility units they want.

Aceros’ hope is that at some point mother and father can modify the units themselves at dwelling to accommodate their youngsters’s wants as they develop.

Subsequent, Aceros will host a particular seminar course for engineering college students to start creating prototype fashions for the modular ride-on units. As soon as prototypes are finalized and examined, UNF will look to companion with a number one medical tools supplier to mass-produce the units and assist younger individuals with disabilities throughout the globe to maneuver a bit of simpler.