Develop a stretching device for David
About David
David is 23 years old and lives in St.Gallen. He is blind and in a wheelchair since birth.
Challenge
Since David sits in a wheelchair for his whole life, his muscles are shortened. To stay mobile and be able to do certain tasks independently, e.g., personal hygiene, he needs some flexibility. For that, David needs to stretch regularly. To do so, he would like to have a helping device to spread his legs and stretch his hip flexor muscles. Since he doesn’t feel his legs well and can’t see anything, he additionally would like to receive feedback (e.g., acoustic) for the exerted force. And since stretching is not too exciting per se, it would be super motivating for David to be able to measure his progress. Ideally, this additional functionality is also directly integrated into the device.
David is explaining his project in german: “Hi everyone! My idea is to do a project to stretch my shortened tendons by building a board with two rails to put my knees in to let them move forwards and backwards. Then I would put a belt around my hip to stretch the hip downwards. This should allow to increase my mobility during care or other daily activities. This looks like this”. He then shows stretching in last 2 seconds.
David is explaining his project further in german: “Hello everyone! My project will be a stretching bar consisting of two parts which you can clamp between your thighs to stretch outwards. That's because I have the problem that I can't spread my legs which is a restriction during care or other activities. This bar would work like this: I would put it between the thighs and when you turn it gets longer and stretches more and more.”
Solution
David is limited in his mobility due to contractures in his hip muscles from using a wheelchair his entire life. At the hackathon, a interdisciplinary team developed a home-training device to stretch his hip independently. The device looks similar to a massage bench on which David can comfortably lie down with his upper body face-down while his thighs rest on a padded bar (dangling down from the bench). The upper body is fixed to the bench using a textile strap. David can stretch his hip by manually moving a lever protruding laterally from the bench, pressing the bar on his thighs away from his upper body. The team put great effort into developing an easy-to-use device (only few moving components, requiring as few manipulations by David as possible) to overcome daily use challenges, especially considering his blindness.
