Time really flies when you’re having fun — it’s crazy to think that more than two weeks have passed since the start of this internship!

Last week, my team and I worked to finalize our design criteria as we start moving towards the prototyping stage of the design process. We ultimately came up with goals in six key areas that we aim to meet:

1. Basketball performance
2. Durability
3. Comfort
4. Maintenance/longevity
5. Ease of use
6. Aesthetics

We determined these criteria based off our background research into the problem space as well as interviews with Eric Jr. and his family, his school basketball coach, our friends at e-Nable, and our mentors from Rice 360 and the OEDK. Now that we have a more clear idea of the constraints and objectives of our device, we can turn our attention to brainstorming and testing solutions. One of the existing prosthetic designs made by the e-Nable community, called the kinetic hand, seems to have potential as a starting point to build off of due to its use of flexible 3D-printed material and its streamlined design. In order to familiarize ourselves with this model, we printed and assembled a completed prosthetic as well as two partial “hands” of slightly different sizes.

Kinetic Hand Video

 

On Friday, we had the treat of meeting with Eric Jr. again. The goals of the visit included recasting the mold of his hand and wrist and improving our understanding of the sizing of the prosthetic. As always, he was full of energy and eager to show us his basketball skills, but he also did a great job of communicating his thoughts on the current kinetic hand model. The two biggest flaws seemed to be the positioning and orientation of the thumb and the lack of support during wrist extension. Overall though, we were able to figure out a size that should fit Eric Jr. well and now have defined areas of the design that we can begin brainstorming solutions for.

I have also really enjoyed getting to know the other Rice 360 and SEED interns these last two weeks during the various workshops and socials we have participated in and am looking forward to see what everyone is able to come up with by the end of the summer. Thanks for stopping by this week — until next time!

-Alex