Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
14 Ankle Injury Prevention
Honorable Mention
 Erin Sarver
Matthew Miller
Skyler Shi
 Sowji Akshintala design_document1.pdf
design_document2.pdf
final_paper1.pdf
other1.pdf
presentation1.pdf
presentation2.pdf
presentation3.zip
proposal1.pdf
UPDATED:

GROUP:
In-person: Erin Sarver (esarver2) & Matt Miller (mjm12); Online: Skyler Shi (jingtao2)

PROBLEM
In basketball, the most common injury that occurs is the ankle sprain or ankle roll. This injury occurs when the ankle inverts or everts more than its normal range of motion, thereby tearing ligaments and causing swelling. A tally of all injuries has shown that 13% of injuries at the NBA level and 40% of injuries at the high school level are ankle injuries, making it the most common injury at both levels of play. 1 2

SOLUTION OVERVIEW
Our team wants to help basketball players of all levels prevent these injuries by monitoring ankle stress throughout a basketball game. After collecting ankle stress data, we can analyze the digital time series data and show players:

Time instances where they put their ankle under extraneous stress
How stable their ankle behaves on landings (bad landings is the number one cause of ankle sprain)
Whether their ankle stress patterns are similar to the patterns of a low ankle injury-risk player or to the patterns of a high ankle injury-risk player
Note: Before a player plays in a game, we can ask him to move his ankle in all directions of motion and record their “normal” range of motion. This range of motion will be used as a threshold for detecting extraneous ankle stress.

We will measure ankle stress through the design of a shoe outfitted with the appropriate sensors. By measuring ankle stress, we can even design a metric “Ankle Stability” that informs professional players of the reliability of their ankles given their movement mechanics. This measure will greatly help inform coaches in deciding how long to play a player in a game to maximize their output and minimize their injury-risk.

SOLUTION COMPONENTS
SUBSYSTEM 1: SHOE
We need a special shoe that can measure ankle stress. Here is an initial proposal of the design of the shoe.

Processing: We will use a micro controller on a custom PCB to collect sensor signals and process sensor signals. We will be able to perform signal analysis after the sensor signals. are collected by the micro controller and passed to the phone app.
Packaging: All components will be outfitted with a waterproof solution to ensure that sweat does not affect the functionality of our design.
Sensors: We will attach multiple flex sensors to the inside of the shoe. One end of the flex sensor will touch the bottom of the shoe. Another end will extend above the shoe and can be attached to the player’s sock through the usage of velcro or other adhering solutions. To make it easier for the player to put on the shoe, we can extend the shoe upwards so the flex sensors don’t get in the way. See this shoe design: https://images.solecollector.com/complex/image/upload/c_fill,dpr_auto,f_auto,fl_lossy,g_face,q_auto,w_1280/nike-kd-8-high-creamsicle-2_dvuh0l.jpg
Sensors: We will attach a pressure sensor to the bottom of the shoe so that we can detect the player jumping and landing. This data paired with the flex sensor data can help us analyze how the player’s ankle behaves during jumps and landings.
Packaging: We will use the smallest battery possible to power our design. The sole of a basketball shoe is incredibly important to performance, so we do not want to package our solution into the sole of the shoe. Instead, we can package the solution onto the top of the shoe. This will not interfere with performance at all given the weight of the solution is not substantial. Basketball shoes are usually around 400 grams, so our solution should be within 100 grams.
Communication: we want to push all data collected to a phone where users can view statistics and analyses in a mobile app. This will give users a more user-friendly experience. To do so, we will fit our microcontroller with a bluetooth module to transmit data.
SUBSYSTEM 2: PHONE APP
Our mobile app will receive all flex sensor and pressure sensor data from both shoes.
To detect abnormal ankle stress, we will simply detect when the flex sensor signal exceeds the normal ankle motion range defined by asking our athletes to perform an initial ankle motion stretch.
To detect jumps and landings, we will detect around 1 second time periods where the pressure sensor spikes twice (jump and land).
Our app will have a user interface that clearly shows athletes what time their ankle was under high stress. It can even show athletes the corresponding game footage by matching timestamps.
Our app will inform an athlete whether they are high risk or low risk of injury based on their stress pattern profile.
CRITERION FOR SUCCESS
To consider our project a success, the following criterion must be met:

A waterproof design that can withstand the sweat inside a shoe
Prediction of a player’s normal range of motion used as a threshold for detecting ankle stress
Collection of flex sensor and pressure sensor data with ability to transmit via bluetooth module to the mobile app
A mobile app that communicates with the microcontroller and delivers reliable feedback to the user for showing at what times their ankle was under high stress.
CONTINGENCY PLAN
In the event that all of our group members must be online-only, one member will be responsible for the shoe design, while the others will be responsible for integrating the mobile app and translating the data into user-friendly feedback. Ideally, we will have the shoe design and PCB completed before this event, as the rest of the project can be completed virtually using at home supplies. If the shoe design and PCB are unable to be completed before the class becomes online-only, the two in-person students would still meet to finish the construction of these two components. We will create a video to demo our project, which will consist of clips from each of the three team members.

El Durazno Wind Turbine Project

Alexander Hardiek, Saanil Joshi, Ganpath Karl

El Durazno Wind Turbine Project

Featured Project

Partners: Alexander Hardiek (ahardi6), Saanil Joshi (stjoshi2), and Ganpath Karl (gkarl2)

Project Description: We have decided to innovate a low cost wind turbine to help the villagers of El Durazno in Guatemala access water from mountains, based on the pitch of Prof. Ann Witmer.

Problem: There is currently no water distribution system in place for the villagers to gain access to water. They have to travel my foot over larger distances on mountainous terrain to fetch water. For this reason, it would be better if water could be pumped to a containment tank closer to the village and hopefully distributed with the help of a gravity flow system.

There is an electrical grid system present, however, it is too expensive for the villagers to use. Therefore, we need a cheap renewable energy solution to the problem. Solar energy is not possible as the mountain does not receive enough solar energy to power a motor. Wind energy is a good alternative as the wind speeds and high and since it is a mountain, there is no hindrance to the wind flow.

Solution Overview: We are solving the power generation challenge created by a mismatch between the speed of the wind and the necessary rotational speed required to produce power by the turbine’s generator. We have access to several used car parts, allowing us to salvage or modify different induction motors and gears to make the system work.

We have two approaches we are taking. One method is converting the induction motor to a generator by removing the need of an initial battery input and using the magnetic field created by the magnets. The other method is to rewire the stator so the motor can spin at the necessary rpm.

Subsystems: Our system components are split into two categories: Mechanical and Electrical. All mechanical components came from a used Toyota car such as the wheel hub cap, serpentine belt, car body blade, wheel hub, torsion rod. These components help us covert wind energy into mechanical energy and are already built and ready. Meanwhile, the electrical components are available in the car such as the alternator (induction motor) and are designed by us such as the power electronics (AC/DC converters). We will use capacitors, diodes, relays, resistors and integrated circuits on our printed circuit boards to develop the power electronics. Our electrical components convert the mechanical energy in the turbine into electrical energy available to the residents.

Criterion for success: Our project will be successful when we can successfully convert the available wind energy from our meteorological data into electricity at a low cost from reusable parts available to the residents of El Durazno. In the future, their residents will prototype several versions of our turbine to pump water from the mountains.