Carnegie Mellon students design new device

Biomedical students help autistic

PITTSBURGH— A team of biomedical engineering students from Carnegie Mellon University won first place Sept. 25 in a national Student Design Competition sponsored by the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center for the Advancement of Cognitive Technologies (RERC-ACT) and the Colorado-based Coleman Institute. Their entry was a redesign of a "Hug Machine" to calm people with autism.

Team leader Jenna L. Colbaugh, who now works in package design and development for the Procter & Gamble Company, said the hug machine is designed to help people with autism cope with anxiety and other stress-related conditions by safely applying soothing lateral body pressure under the user's own control. The team's goal was to redesign a very costly already commercially available device into an affordable system that could be built from locally available parts by parents, schools and clinics with autistic children or adults.

With the supervision of biomedical engineering professors James Antaki and Mark B. Friedman, Colbaugh's team – which included biomedical engineering department seniors Daron Colflesh, Sabrina Dhanani, Stephen Lin and Neil Stegall – designed and tested a prototype that can literally squeeze tension right out of a stressed-out patient.

"We combined a twin bed air mattress with a built-in remote control fan inflator and an adjustable and collapsible plywood frame to support it. The user can make the sides move gently in a lateral direction, creating a safe hugging motion for the patient inside the sandwich-shaped prototype," said Colbaugh, who graduated in May 2007 from the College of Engineering.

Colbaugh said her team worked non-stop over spring break and right up to graduation to make the prototype perfect. The students tested the hug machine on 40 peers and friends across campus.

Contest entries were judged on how potentially valuable the technology might be for cognitively impaired users and how many of them might benefit from the technology. By designing their system from readily available parts for assembly with simple hand tools, rather than complex or exotic materials, the students and contest judges believe that the system may benefit people who can't afford access to the existing commercial system – whose size, cost and complexity severely limit the number of potential users who might benefit from it.

"This award is really a testament to the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit of our students and the promise of this creative biomedical engineering design class," said Antaki, who is now developing a revolutionary new infant heart-assist pump to help infant cardiac patients.

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About Carnegie Mellon:

Carnegie Mellon is a private research university with a distinctive mix of programs in engineering, computer science, robotics, business, public policy, fine arts and the humanities. More than 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students receive an education characterized by its focus on creating and implementing solutions for real problems, interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. A small student-to-faculty-ratio provides an opportunity for close interaction between the students and the professors. While technology is pervasive on its 144-acre Pittsburgh campus, Carnegie Mellon is also distinctive among leading research universities for the world-renowned programs in its College of Fine Arts. A global university, Carnegie Mellon has campuses in Silicon Valley, Calif., and Qatar and programs in Asia, Australia and Europe. For more, see www.cmu.edu.