Kayann Berger’s family was having a problem with her grandmother developing a propensity for wandering as her dementia worsened.
Miss Berger, a senior University of Toledo mechanical engineering major from Ypsilanti, Mich., and three classmates used that situation as the inspiration for a senior design project they presented Friday in the front, ground-floor corridors at UT’s Nitschke Hall.
While their solution was derived from the Invisible Fence systems pet owners use to keep their dogs in their yards, the Invisible Guardian system triggers a messaging app to let caregivers know the wearer is straying, rather than the mild electrical jolt a house pet receives for the same behavior.
“We promise. I’m not going to shock my grandmother,” Miss Berger laughed while explaining the device at one of dozens of display tables at the student exposition.
University officials said about 50 UT engineering teams participated in the exhibit as part of their required senior design projects.
“The Senior Design Expo is a tradition in the University of Toledo College of Engineering for decades as a showcase of student creativity and ingenuity in collaboration with community partners,” said Dr. Mike Toole, the UT engineering college’s dean.
Displays described, and often demonstrated, prototypes or design solutions for a range of concepts, many developed in response to problems presented by businesses or agencies in the area.
For example, at the behest of Dana Corp., one team developed an autonomous ball-joint lubrication system. Two other projects were inspired by requests from The Ability Center to help children with disabilities play on a more even basis with their peers.
Those were a wheelchair mounting and switch control system for squirt guns or Nerf guns, and a switch-controlled water-balloon launcher, both designed for use by people who have little, if any, use of their arms.
Gavin Robie, a member of the balloon-launcher team from Toledo, was one of several students who said the expo’s time constraints limited what their projects accomplished.
“We would like to do a second iteration before we provide this” to The Ability Center, he said.
Some of the projects were highly technical, such as a device to allow use of metal composites, rather than plastics alone, in 3D printing.
Including some metal in such materials allows the production of “high-tolerance parts,” said team member Will Gajda of Grosse Ile, Mich., before expressing interest in seeing how future classes might improve the process his team developed.
More geared toward consumers was a product that combines a Wi-Fi access point with a light bulb, so users could install the equivalent of a wireless router anywhere in their homes or businesses.
While teams of mechanical engineers generally displayed devices, their civil engineering counterparts typically proposed public-works projects or systems, such as one team’s study and recommendations for pedestrian safety near the Toledo Museum of Art, which also is the subject of an imminent signal upgrade being done by Toledo’s Division of Transportation.
Vladimir Sokol, a civil-engineering senior from Cleveland, said his team assumed as an “existing condition” the city’s imminent installation of a pedestrian-activated stoplight called a HAWK signal at the crosswalk linking the art museum with its Glass Pavilion across Monroe Street.
After studying that area at the art museum’s request, the student team recommended a host of other changes that include narrowing Monroe, now at least four lanes all the way from downtown Toledo to Sylvania, to one lane each way for about 4,000 feet between Collingwood Boulevard and Glenwood Avenue.
Part of the vacated right lanes, they said, could be filled in with a wider sidewalk, artwork, or landscaping, while some pavement recesses would be left in place for bus stops and a short-term pulloff for car drivers.
Back at the Invisible Guardian table, Miss Berger said her grandparents’ house already has audible alarms that are tripped when someone goes through an exterior doorway, but her grandfather — Grandma’s frontline caregiver, at least for the time being — isn’t always in a place where he can hear them.
The Invisible Guardian system triggers an Invisible Fence device modified to send a message notifying the caregiver that the patient has left the designated safe area. It includes radio transmitters near potential escape points and a receiver-transmitter secreted in a piece of custom jewelry the patient wears.
First Published December 11, 2021, 12:34 a.m.