UPEI student engineers solve challenges for community partners

From a better way to play bocce in a wheelchair, to a tracker that adjusts solar panels, this year's projects by students at UPEI's Faculty of Sustainable Design Engineering are making a difference, as the young engineers learn important lessons about their future profession. 

"Other schools don't have this, year after year working on projects, and certainly not with the community," said assistant professor Libby Osgood.

"They're learning about the things that they would learn in other schools, but here they're implementing it, and practicing it."

Natasha Benoit, a volunteer with Special Olympics, came to the engineering program looking for a better way for athletes in wheelchairs to play bocce. 

"The athletes are of all different ranges of abilities, so some you have to help more than others," she said. "So it became a challenge to hold a ramp, hold the ball, help them with their hands."

Benoit said the new ramp will make a huge difference for some of the athletes.

"A bocce ball can be quite heavy, and some athletes don't have the ability to hold something that heavy," she said.

"For the volunteer, it frees up our hands so we can be more animated, and more helpful, and just make it a better experience."

Spencer Blacquiere, a third-year engineering student, said he's looking forward to seeing athletes using the invention.

Getting to see them actually use what we've built is going to be rewarding.— Spencer Blacquiere, UPEI engineering student

"That's going to be a very special moment, and something we've been looking forward to this whole semester," he said.  

"You design this project with the athletes and the volunteers in mind, and getting to see them actually use what we've built is going to be rewarding."

Drumming device

For second-year student Amara Sanchez and her classmates, the challenge was to find a way for a young Mi'kmaw boy to take part in traditional drumming. 

"He has very limited mobility, and he can only move his arms within a certain range," Sanchez said. 

She said the new device should let him "participate in his traditions, such as playing the drum alongside his peers, and connect with his roots."

Sanchez said one of the biggest challenges was making a design using a traditional handmade drum and drumstick. 

"We didn't want to harm or damage the instruments because they're handmade, they're unique," she said.

Sanchez described the moment when the device finally worked as "a eureka moment." 

"We had some feedback from the Indigenous knowledge faculty here at UPEI, and they were also incredibly happy," she said.

"After all of this hard work, this stress and tears, it was very, very rewarding to hear positive feedback on our project."

Solar automation

Mac-Donald Duru and his group of fourth-year engineering students were tasked with a project involving solar panels. 

"Our clients were Sunly. They had a racking system that doesn't move, and you have to manually go and rotate it four times a year during the seasons. But they wanted us to automate that process. 

"Besides the regular challenges you get, like technical difficulties, the strike that the university had didn't help because we weren't able to get feedback from our professors," Duru said. 

"Just seeing it come together was very fulfilling for myself, and a lot of the team members."

I think it's the first moments of, I could do this for the rest of my life. It's really inspiring.— Libby Osgood, Faculty of Sustainable Design Engineering

"You can just see this spark in their eye, and an understanding of, 'This is what engineers do,'" Osgood said.

"I think it's the first moments of 'I could do this for the rest of my life.' It's really inspiring."