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Outreach Event: Engineers Save Lives

A few weeks ago we hosted an outreach event in collaboration with UCL Engineering department and the Royal Institution.

We set the children a brief entitled: Design for Disabilities.

Disability is being transformed by engineering: new wheelchairs, hearing aids, better prosthetics and smart bandages are all making the disabled more able to take part in society.

 

Spectacles are a product designed to aid vision these are now much more of a fashion accessory. Why shouldn’t hearing aids be as fashionable as eyewear?

In June last year the BBC trailed a low-cost brainwave-reading headset to control iplayer. It allowed users to select programes without lifting a finger. They headset uses two sensors; one that rests on the forehead, and another clips to the ears, these measure the brains electrical signals.

A chip in your brain can control a robotic arm.

Oscar Pistorius was one of the first double amputee to win an able-bodied race. During the 2012 Summer Olympics to win a medal in the mens 400m. Did Oscar’s carbon-fibre running blades give him an unfair advantage over other able-bodied competitors? Did this technology, the International Olympics Committee asked, take him beyond normal human limits?

The brief was to design and prototype a product in this market sector.

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Uploaded on February 11, 2016
Taken on January 30, 2016