Danny's Week Long Makeathon
From: Abilities Expo - 10/30/2016

Meet Daniel who has CP, a cortical vision impairment and a big challenge. His
low vision meant he had challenges navigating his surroundings from his
wheelchair. Accidents would happen because he could not see edges - falling
off the side of a ramp, down some stairs. Enter the Makeathon and a solution!
A Makeathon is where a group of individuals come together to collaborate and
solve a specific challenge. At this workshop you’ll hear Daniel’s story, and
discover how a weeklong Makeathon designed a new type of edge detection
system that notifies Danny when he drives near stairs or other ledges. The
Makeathon team will be on hand to tell the story and share how you can use a
Makeathon to create solutions to similar problems.

"Our friend Danny Stickney has cerebral palsy and a cortical vision
impairment. We immersed ourselves a whole week in his home identifying daily
challenges and coming up with creative solutions, with the aim of preventing
injury and promoting independence. For the first three days we executed
experiments to quantify his cognitive, motor and sensory capabilities. We
discovered his biggest challenge is navigation, especially in new
environments where he has no spatial memories of. We hacked his wheelchair to
add ramp lateral edge detection, frontal drop off detection, and backing
assistance through multi-modal feedback."

View the video (5:58) at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5Id4Oansxw