| 
|
| |
| |||
| 
| ||
|
CONTACT:
| Dune Buggy Wheelchair Featured in Los Angeles, CA - On June 10, California State University, Los Angeles mechanical engineering students and professors, along with staff members from Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center's Rehabilitation Engineering Program, unveiled a "dune buggy" wheelchair designed to travel on sand, as people took turns driving the chubby-tired device on the campus. The beach wheelchair is part of the five HERE (Hands-on Experiences in Rehabilitation Engineering) collaborative projects between Rancho Los Amigos and Cal State L.A. aiming to develop life-enhancing technology for physically disabled people. This wheelchair had been successfully tested one week before at Santa Monica Beach. The five student teams were composed of graduating seniors and freshmen in Cal State L.A.'s MESA Engineering Program (MEP). The senior design projects are part of a course taught at the University. "I'm so excited about this because rehabilitation engineering brings a more human component to engineering. It's an ideal way to introduce freshman students to engineering," said Milton Randle, director of the Mathematics, Engineering and Science Achievement (MESA) program at Cal State L.A., which encompasses MEP. Randle said he wants Cal State L.A. engineering students to leave the campus with "people skills." Involving students in activities that could enhance the lives of the physically disabled goes a long way toward that goal, said Randle. Team leader and senior Ana Rosa Arreola, a resident of Lincoln Heights, said working on the beach wheelchair project made her more sensitive to the challenges faced by the physically disadvantaged. "As an engineering student, I would think of machines, technology and power, but I didn't think too much about people. But when you meet people with disabilities, you realize that as an engineer, you can do so many things to change their lives," said Arreola, who has worked part-time at JPL for two years. The HERE collaboration program between the Downey-based Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center and Cal State L.A. was funded by the Department of Education and the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. "Part of the idea is to get traditionally disadvantaged students interested in rehabilitation engineering as a field," said Dr. Samuel Landsberger, technical director of the Rancho Los Amigos Rehabilitation Engineering Program. Also at the event, three graduating Cal State L.A. senior mechanical engineering majors presented their work on a launch lock mechanism for Hughes Aircraft. Launch locks restrain deployable structures on satellites-like antennas-during launch cycles. Dylan Wakasa, 29, from Alhambra, Alexie Taslakian, 25, from Glendale and Rick Aguilera, 28, from Alhambra, have been testing a Dowel Rail Design Launch Lock in an effort to help develop a device that is less expensive but just as reliable as the current lock Hughes uses.
# # # |