Capstone Team Presents Project at National Amputee Golf Association Clinic

May 08, 2012

The prosthetic device shown helps make golfing possible for amputees.

One of the spring 2012 capstone design teams presented its final project, improving on a prosthesis allowing bilateral amputees to play recreational sports like golf and tennis, at a “First Swing/Learn to Golf” clinic hosted by the National Amputee Golf Association at the Penn State Golf Course in April. The capstone team was advised by Dr. Jason Moore, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

Attending the event included medical professionals in the field of occupational therapy and people with disabilities who want to learn to play golf. Jenna Greaser, an undergraduate student in Bioengineering, helped organize the event.

The capstone design team, a multidisciplinary team made up of mechanical engineering and bioengineering majors, improved the design of a golf prosthetic device for Diane Matter, a bilateral amputee from the local area.

The goal was to “reduce the weight and improve the manufacturability of the current device while developing and prototyping ideas to make the device multifunctional to enable a broader range of recreational activities beyond golf,” according to the Learning Factory project description.

“The work spun out of a project from last summer’s Iron Lion Design Challenge and is now being supported by the National Science Foundation grant that Dr. Maggie Slattery, Assistant Professor in Bioengineering, and Dr. Mary Frecker, Professor in Mechanical Engineering, have to support multidisciplinary capstone design projects for people with disabilities,” said Dr. Timothy Simpson, Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and Director of the Learning Factory.

Students who worked on the project over the spring 2012 semester included Bioengineering students Jesse Addis, Aaron Cheung, and Sharon Waxmonsky, Industrial Engineering student Dylan Sirgiovanni, and Bioengineering and Mechanical Engineering dual major Erin Viscito. The team competed against 92 other teams at the College of Engineering’s Spring 2012 Design Showcase on April 26, 2012 and won a third place Best Project award based on evaluation by industry judges.