Soccer Adaptation
One project in the Rehabilitation Engineering course this spring was taken from a national design competition. The challenge: design a low cost (less than $50) manual wheelchair attachment that would enable a young girl with spastic cerebral palsy to more fully participate in playing soccer. The game is played on an indoor basketball court and a friend pushes her chair.
The goal was to develop a device which would attach to her wheelchair and allow her to gather the ball close to her chair and then "kick" or release the ball toward the net. The device could not require fine motor control to operate. The class produced seven prototypes. Two of these devices appear to be very promising and could easily be modified and adapted for use by a child or a young adult in our local area. We need help in establishing local contacts that would enable us to evaluate these designs. Please contact us if you know persons or organizations that participate in wheelchair soccer.
Maintained by webmaster@wpi.eduLast modified: October 25, 2007 11:33:21