I-Corps: Advancing access equity and user safety through bio-inspired all-terrain mobility solutions

Award ID: 2330074

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to make physical access more equitable for people with mobility limitations, increase cane user safety, and mitigate financial barriers to mobility aid access. This project enhances scientific and technological understanding by providing biomechanical evidence to validate the functionality of a new cane design. This will both encourage disclosure of experimental justification for mobility aid designs (which has been lacking in the field) and highlight the potential of nature-inspired design to contribute to solving societal challenges. This innovation specifically offers a novel biomechanical approach to designing stabilizing mobility aids to increase their versatility and safety. This provides a clear contribution to helping millions of Americans achieve mobility independence in safe and effective ways, increasing access equity and user confidence. The high number of mobility aid users in the US alone and the evidence that this technology can operate with more comfort and versatility than standard devices indicate its significant commercial potential. Moreover, marketing directly to users and to community spaces where shared devices can be available decreases many financial and logistical barriers that often limit access to aids. Exploring the latter niche market will also enhance this technologys potential commercial impact. This I-Corps project is based on the development of a bio-inspired all-terrain cane that increases the devices stability on uneven, natural terrains and decreases impact to a users body. Currently marketed canes rely heavily on a users physical capability and have been linked to an increased risk of fall-related injuries and overuse injuries. They also lack publicly available scientific evidence that supports the effectiveness of their designs. The bio-inspired cane design supported by this project has undergone extensive biomechanical testing to verify its potential to increase functionality in a variety of user scenarios and minimize the risk of user injury as compared to an industry standard cane. The research supporting this technology centered around testing functionally-relevant characteristics in environments commonly encountered by users, thus offering a model for future biomechanical testing of mobility aids. Furthermore, the nature-inspired design approach to this research exemplifies the potential of transferring principles from natural models to engineered technologies to streamline the design process. The hope is that this will inspire other engineers and designers to look to natural systems as design models to solve future technological challenges in mobility aids. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Jaime A. Camelio