Dr. Moran’s Human-Powered vehicle

Developing a human-powered vehicle product for a JMU professor that wanted to ride alongside his daughter. The professor, Dr. Moran, has cerebral palsy and that meant that physically his strengths in riding a bike per se were different from that of the design of a traditional bike. Our job was to go through the human-centered design process and fabricate a human-powered vehicle according to his needs.

The human-powered vehicle featured a three wheel setup to help Dr. Moran with balance when riding, and since it featured a feet pedal steering system the two wheels in the front would aid in steering. Since Dr. Moran had more upper strength than lower body strength, the propulsion system was designed to be pedaled by the arms. Everyone races in their bike at some point in their life, and we wanted to add that experience by adding an electric motor to provide some boost!

Through this project, I learned the value of listening to stakeholders and following up through the iterations as to make sure that the project satisfies the client’s needs. In particular, this project was one that I took a lot of dedication as I aimed to design the best product for him and to help him achieve his dream of riding alongside his daughter.

Overall.

  • What

    Our client, Dr. Moran a professor at JMU, has cerebral palsy and wished to ride alongside his daughter. Our task was to use the human centered design process to design and fabricate a human-powered vehicle for our client.

  • How

    We went through the five stages of the human-centered design process: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test as to fabricate a human powered-vehicle to handoff using SolidWorks, Matlab, and LTSpice.

  • Results

    Handed off a customized human-powered vehicle for Dr. Moran in which it included a feet pedal mechanism, hand propulsion, and an electric motor boost.

Propulsion and Steering.

Since our client, Dr. Moran, had much more upper body strength than lower body strength, a traditional bike system would not by design be functional for him. I designed a system where the steering would take place with the feet as a counter pedal. The propulsion system would involve pedaling with the arms, similar to exercise machines typically found in physical therapy.