By: Ryley McGinnis, Student Written Communications Specialist, UConn School of Engineering<\/strong><\/p>\n Coming close to the finish line of their Senior Design journey, the biomedical engineering team of Mitchell DuBuc, James Welch and Alex Draper are finding out that the real-world of engineering is more stressful than their engineering education. <\/span><\/p>\n The team is testing a new type of wheelchair wheels called Rowheels, which use a pull motion to go forward. <\/span>In a traditional wheelchair, the user pushes to go forward and pulls to go backward. In the new pull wheelchair, users do the complete opposite and pull to go forward and push to go backward. <\/span><\/p>\n Under the advisement of Professor Krystyna Gielo-Perczak, the team is putting these wheels to the test. RoWheels have passed laboratory tests and applications, but this Senior Design team is testing these wheels in real-life applications.<\/span><\/p>\n However, the team faced major time constraints in their testing, which threw a wrench in their original plans. <\/span><\/p>\n The reason for the time constraints centered on the longer-than-anticipated approval process from the Institutional Review Board (IRB), leaving them only enough time to test on three people: DuBuc, Draper (as a control to see what muscles are activated for someone who isn\u2019t wheelchair-bound) and DuBuc\u2019s roommate, Anders Waldo \u201820 (CLAS), who also uses a manual wheelchair.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s definitely my biggest regret, I just wish we had more time for testing,\u201d said Draper. <\/span><\/p>\n DuBuc echoed the same sentiment and added that any Senior Design team that needs to conduct testing should definitely start the IRB process much earlier in order to avoid these obstacles.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOnce we got approval on March 26, we immediately sent out recruiting info to UConn\u2019s Center for Students with Disabilities (CSD) and the UConn Daily Digest,\u201d said DuBuc, \u201cBut, there are only five people on campus who reported to CSD that they used a manual wheelchair, including myself and my roommate.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n They haven’t heard from the other three possible people, and they said they\u2019ve accepted that they\u2019re just going to have a limited sample. <\/span><\/p>\n However, the time constraints haven\u2019t tainted their excitement for the project overall. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been working on this project for about a year now and being able to collect the information and test our assumptions is exciting,\u201d said DuBuc. <\/span><\/p>\n The team\u2019s original hypothesis was that the Rowheels\u2019 pulling motion would activate bigger muscles, like larger back muscles, and therefore prevent shoulder impingement that conventional wheels cause. They found that while this may be true in some cases, it really depends on the user\u2019s type of disability and the muscles they have control of. <\/span><\/p>\n For DuBuc, who is paralyzed from the mid-spine down, the Rowheels didn\u2019t activate the muscles they thought it would. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSince I don\u2019t have complete function of the bigger back muscles, we found that the body compensated to use more of the upper back muscles,\u201d said DuBuc. He went on to say that this could possibly cause even more shoulder impingement. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe testing showed us that it\u2019s more complicated than just saying the Rowheels are better,\u201d said DuBuc. \u201cYou can\u2019t really make a blanket statement, it depends on the individual\u2019s level of disability.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n The team said they hope that more people will continue testing the Rowheels so that they can eventually become a part of the physical therapy diagnosis process. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAfter part one of this story came out, a lot of people reached out saying they didn\u2019t know about these wheels,\u201d said Draper, \u201cand that just lends itself to why we are evaluating these methods and how important it is to get the word out there.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n If the project were to be picked up by another team or professionals, Draper said that getting more testing done is crucial to see more trends and how it could actually apply to the field. <\/span><\/p>\n The team will finish up the project and prepare their final reports in time for Senior Design Demonstration Day on May 3, and they said they are honestly ready for it to be over. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cEven though we haven\u2019t presented yet, just knowing that I\u2019ll be done soon is a huge weight off my shoulders,\u201d said Draper. <\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/RoWheels19-7-1024x528.jpg\")