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C2C Pathways: Prototype Design Process

The C2C Pathways to Success teens have been hard at work creating their prototype for this year's project, an automatic baseball bat for P.E. students with disabilities and limited mobility. Their design will be used by athletes in the Jefferson County Adapted P.E. program.

The Engineering Team has been focused on the joystick, which is the control that the P.E. students will use. With the joystick, these athletes will be able to swing the bat by either pushing the lever by gripping the handles, pushing the lever by high-fiving the hand shape, pushing a button on the base of the joystick or activating a voice command.

The team has been mentored by Samantha Donen, an Industrial Engineer at iFuzion, who has guided them through the process in person and even through some extra work on Zoom. The process consisted of them sketching their initial ideas to transferring them to digital designs. Next up was building cardboard prototypes followed by endless user testing (photos, videos, feedback, comments, etc.) on other program participants. Plus, one participant, Ashley, has been researching how to embed a Raspberry Pi (mini computer) to a motor in order to swing the baseball bat. She's even taking it one step further to try to connect it to a Bluetooth transmitter and phone application in order to connect it to a phone app to save student profile settings, such as bat swing speed and noise control.

After gathering feedback and making the necessary changes, we are excited to announce that the 3D model of their joystick controller is complete. Pictures are included below.