Projects
DeVILS Project: Parkinson's Mobility Exoskeleton
Proposal Presentation
Problem Summary and Solution
Parkinson's patients experience balance instability that forces them to use their hands for support when standing, eliminating their ability to perform tasks requiring hand use such as mechanical work, hobbies, and daily activities, while existing mobility aids fail to free the hands and are often rejected due to stigma. The proposed solution is a lower body balance support exoskeleton constructed from carbon fiber and titanium Grade 5, featuring base plates under the feet for weight distribution, leg bracing assemblies to prevent lateral sway, locking joints for extended stationary standing, and a waist ring connecting both leg assemblies into a unified support structure. Users don the exoskeleton similarly to strapping on leg braces, with the device concealing beneath regular clothing via a belt attachment system to preserve dignity and reduce the stigma that prevents many Parkinson's patients from accepting traditional mobility aids. Once secured, the user can walk to their desired location, lock the joints for stationary standing, and use both hands freely for tasks like model building, mechanical tinkering, or any activity requiring sustained hand use while upright. While the presentation effectively communicates the core problem and solution, additional rendered animations or detailed component callouts would strengthen the audience's understanding of how the device functions in real world use. A potential customer, particularly a Parkinson's patient or their caregiver, would likely react positively as the design directly addresses both the physical challenge of balance and the psychological barriers of stigma and dignity that current solutions completely ignore.
Experience applying the entrepreneurial mindset to my design
This solution originated from a personal connection to the problem, as I personally experience involuntary hand opening, which initially led me to explore devices for preventing dropped objects before customer interviews completely redirected my focus to the more fundamental problem of standing balance instability in Parkinson's patients. The solution came far more from customer focused findings than my own ideas, as interviews with my grandfather Warren, a 75-year-old retired mechanic with Parkinson's disease, and my grandmother Jeanette, whose husband passed away from Parkinson's complications, revealed that balance while standing was the critical unmet need, and Warren specifically inspired the hands-free design requirement by expressing his desire to continue building models and tinkering at his workbench. The market for this product is highly scalable, as approximately one million Americans currently live with Parkinson's disease with 90,000 new diagnoses annually, and the broader population of elderly individuals with balance impairment extends the potential customer base significantly beyond Parkinson's patients alone. Technologically this design advances affordable exoskeleton development into an underserved medical space, societally it restores independence and dignity to patients who would otherwise lose meaningful activities that define their identity, environmentally the durable carbon fiber and titanium construction minimizes replacement waste through longevity, and financially it creates value by offering a solution at $2,000-$3,500 at production scale compared to existing exoskeletons exceeding $100,000, while opening a realistic pathway for Medicare reimbursement eligibility.
Experience using the design process
The engineering design process proved extremely valuable in developing this solution, guiding me through structured stages of problem definition, research, brainstorming, and evaluation that prevented me from jumping straight to a solution before fully understanding the problem. The process was particularly useful in exploring multiple solution options, as I developed and evaluated four distinct concepts including a motorized tail support system, an overhead track harness, a workbench mounted support arm, and the final exoskeleton design, with the decision matrix providing an objective framework for selecting the strongest solution rather than defaulting to my first idea. The design did change significantly from my initial vision, as I originally conceived a simple hand tremor prevention device before customer interviews completely redirected the problem definition toward standing balance support, and the exoskeleton itself evolved through CAD modeling as I discovered structural and ergonomic considerations that were invisible during the initial sketching phase. What surprised me most about engineering through this process was how much of the work happens before any designing begins, as I expected engineering to be primarily about creating solutions but discovered that deeply understanding the problem, the customer, and the existing market is what separates a design that works technically from one that actually creates value for real people.
How I envision using the design process in the future
The engineering design process has fundamentally changed how I approach problem solving, and I can immediately see applications in my current work as a videographer and drone operator for a construction company, where inefficiencies in site documentation, client communication, and safety reporting represent real unmet needs that could benefit from structured problem definition and customer focused design thinking. This process absolutely sparked excitement for solving everyday problems, as I am already pursuing multiple technical ventures including drone-based photogrammetry software, server infrastructure for cloud computing, and web development services, and having a structured framework for validating problems through customer interviews before investing time and resources into solutions will fundamentally improve how I approach each of these projects. What excites me most is applying the entrepreneurial mindset to my existing businesses, specifically identifying whether the problems I am solving are the real problems my customers experience or simply the problems I assumed they had, which is a distinction this project made very clear through the dramatic shift from my initial hand tremor hypothesis to the actual standing balance problem. Engineering has always been part of how I think about the world through building guitar pedals, constructing server racks, and developing technical software systems, but this process gave me a formal framework that I believe will make me significantly more effective at identifying genuine opportunities and creating solutions that deliver real value rather than technically impressive ones that solve the wrong problem.
Wildfire Thermal Boundary Detection and Alert System
Final Report
Problem and Solution Summary
The problem I chose to solve was the lack of persistent, affordable fixed-wing thermal surveillance capability for wildfire incident command operations. Ground commanders managing active wildfire suppression need continuous real-time thermal imagery of fire perimeter movement to deploy resources effectively and keep firefighting crews safe, but current solutions, short-endurance helicopters, limited-payload drones, and periodic satellite passes, all leave significant gaps in coverage. My solution is a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan EX turboprop aircraft configured for Profile A sensor-only long-endurance mapping, carrying a 519lb sensor suite including a belly-mounted infrared camera pod and roof-mounted SATCOM antenna that streams thermal imagery directly to ground incident commanders in real time. I identified five customer needs through stakeholder analysis and translated them into weighted design criteria using the Analytic Hierarchy Process: sensor capability (38%), endurance (28%), survivability in fire environments (16%), data relay speed (12%), and payload capacity (6%). Every major design decision, wing selection, mission profile, spar material, and automation system, was traced back to these criteria, ensuring the final design directly serves the incident commander's need for sustained, high-quality situational awareness. The wing design process selected a low-drag 18m span configuration with an L/D ratio of 32.99, directly maximizing the loiter endurance the customer depends on, and the WTBDAS automation system reduces pilot cognitive workload so the aircraft can operate closer to the fire perimeter with greater safety margins. The financial analysis projects a manufacturing cost of $7.1M, annual net earnings of $25M, and a 32-year service lifespan with a lifetime ROI of 4,349%, confirming the design creates substantial economic value alongside its operational value. I believe the final report fully explains the design and its customer value, every decision is quantified, traced to a requirement, and justified through simulation data rather than intuition.
Design Process Experience
This project was the first time I used a fully structured engineering design process from problem definition through financial analysis, and the experience fundamentally changed how I think about solving complex problems. The models, AHP decision matrices, UML diagrams, wing simulation experiments, structural spar analysis, and FAT procedures, were genuinely useful for making and defending decisions rather than just being documentation exercises; when Wing 3 scored better than Wing 2 in the decision matrix and the deflection plot confirmed structural adequacy, I had quantitative evidence that the choice was correct rather than just a preference. The biggest difference from the DeVILS project was the depth of iteration, in DeVILS we identified a problem and proposed a solution relatively quickly, while in this project each subsystem went through multiple design cycles with data collected at each step informing the next decision. My understanding of the customer's role also evolved significantly: early in the project I thought of the customer as someone who validates the final design, but the AHP weighting process made me realize the customer's priorities have to drive every individual decision throughout the process, not just the final review.
Future Application
The design process skills I developed in this project, particularly structured requirement definition, weighted decision matrix analysis, and verification testing, are directly applicable to the software development and systems work I do professionally, where I frequently need to evaluate competing architectural options and justify technology choices to stakeholders. The skill I expect to benefit me most is formal requirement traceability: the discipline of writing a requirement, designing to meet it, and then verifying it with a documented test procedure is something I can immediately apply to my professional and personal technical projects, where untested assumptions regularly create rework cycles that a structured verification process would prevent. I want to practice UML behavioral modeling more specifically, the sequence and activity diagrams were the most immediately transferable skill to software system design, and I only scratched the surface of what structured behavioral modeling can do for complex multi-actor systems. This project has prepared me to tackle larger problems by demonstrating that a complex multi-disciplinary system becomes manageable when broken into independently designed and verified subsystems, which is exactly the mindset I need as I take on increasingly complex technical projects across both my professional work and personal engineering pursuits.