Welcome to Assistive Technology Design Projects

Class is no longer being offered.  This site is for information only.

BME 460, a capstone design course, is offered to engineering students at Duke University. Students are paired with health care professionals to build custom assistive, recreational, or therapeutic devices for people with disabilities in the local community. For example, students in fall 2008 modified a bike to allow a woman who was injured in an automobile accident to ride again.

Students teams design, build, test and deliver projects to clients in one semester. This involves a large commitment, but the results are worth it, as the client from a 2007 project noted:

“The combo sock/shoe assist works perfectly and saves me up to 30 minutes each time I use it. I never have to worry about the time it will take to put on shoes. It just takes a couple of minutes at most for both shoes. This device is life changing!”

Students enjoy the chance to apply their engineering skills to meet the need of an individual in the community:

“I loved finally applying my engineering knowledge to a practical problem.”
“This course made me feel like a real engineer!”

Please feel free to navigate this site and learn more about BME 460. On the site you will find links to past projects built at Duke. Clicking here will lead you to a site where you can search for projects built for people with disabilities at other universities with support from the National Science Foundation.

Note that these projects were developed by students for a single individual, and they are not commercially available.  If you want more information on a particular project, please use the “contact us” page on this website to send us a message.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Funding & Support provided by:

National Science Foundation Grant No CBET-0967221

Pratt-Logo-Square_w_500

The Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University

The Lord Foundation of North Carolina

NC Sports for Special Kids

Comments are closed.