SalvageGarden volunteers at Woodlands Make Inclusive Tech Sundays are making a prototype with our user Mr Tan Whee Boon to use during dragonboating.
Who is Boon?
Boon is a quadruple amputee who does wheelchair rugby and dragonboating.
What problem does Boon face?
When Boon paddles the boat, his legs are not long enough to reach the bottom of the boat to provide a counter force to balance himself.
How do we plan to solve this problem?
Our volunteer Francis, has designed a bowl-like cylindrical shaped leg socket to be fitted onto Mr Boon’s leg stump. Next, he would attach an aluminium stick with a rubber stopper on one end to the leg socket on the other end. When the leg socket with stick is fitted onto Mr Boon’s leg, Mr Boon can “touch” the bottom of the boat with the extension to balance himself.
The leg socket has undergone many variations. The first one got the wrong measurements. The second one, while having the correct measurements, was not deep enough. The third prototype fitted the best. Afterwards, Francis designed a cross-shaped locking mechanism into the bottom of the leg socket, so that the stick can be secured onto the leg socket.
What is the intermediate result of the problem solving?
We have not yet tried out the prototype with Boon. We will update the blog once we fit the stick onto the leg socket and let Boon test it out when dragonboating.
