Robotics Innovation

 

IMAHELPS IS NOW CHANGING LIVES IN COLLABORATION WITH AN INNER CITY HIGH SCHOOL ROBOTICS TEAM

by Jeff Crider, August 2023

 

JonDarr Bradshaw, a robotics mentor from the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, Ohio, celebrates the delivery of 7-year-old Ariana Simbaña's mechanical hand, which robotics students provided to her during the IMAHelps mission to Quito, Ecuador.

Photo courtesy of Jeff Crider, IMAHelps

 

Students and their mentors from the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland are designing and manufacturing low-cost mechanical arms and hands for IMAHelps patients in Ecuador.

IMAHelps plans to continue this collaborative effort as we conduct medical missions in other countries. 

            On our latest mission to Quito, Ecuador, the IMAHelps prosthetics team was complemented by two students and their mentors from an inner city high school robotics program at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, Ohio.

            Working together, the robotics team provided several Ecuadorian children with mechanical arms and hands, which they designed and fabricated with 3d printers.

            The robotics students, whose collaborative efforts with IMAHelps have been widely publicized in Cleveland, included Yariselle Andujar and Gabriel Leonard from Davis Aerospace and Maritime High School, and their mentors, JonDarr V.T. Bradshaw, a former military aviator and NASA educator who oversees the robotics program at the Great Lakes Science Center, and Timothy Hatfield, a program manager with Clevand-based Argonaut, a nonprofit organization engaged in education.
            Their Ecuadorian patients included 7-year-old Ariana Simbaña, who was born without any fingers on her left hand. The students fitted Ariana with a mechanical hand with plastic fingers that she was immediately able to use to pick up a plastic bottle. In fact, Ariana was so happy to receive her new hand that she quickly learned how to use both her real hand and her prosthetic hand to create the shape of a heart, which she showed off to our volunteers and family members who had gathered around her. Ariana also told us she hopes to be able to use her hand to ride a bicycle someday.

 

Tim Hatfield, a mentor for the robotics students from Cleveland, Ohio, gives a high five to 16-year-old Elvis after fitting him with his new hand.
Photo courtesy of Angelo DiFusco.

 

            Other patients included 16-year-old Elvis Pilatagsi Achatuña, who lost most of his left hand in a construction accident with his father last year. Elvis said he was cleaning a cement mixer with straw that got caught in blade of the mixer, which pulled his hand into the blade before he could let go. Elvis couldn't stop smiling after the robotics team fitted him with his mechanical hand.

            “I feel really good,” Elvis told us after trying out his new mechanical hand. “”I can be more independent now!”

            Then there was 14-year-old Samantha Chiluisa, who lost her left arm and the ability to use her right arm in a bus crash several years ago. The robotics team not only fitted Samantha with a new prosthetic arm, which she was immediately able to use to pick up a plastic bottle, but they designed a new hand for her with attachments she can use to write or draw without assistance.

            There was not enough time for the robotics team to produce Samantha’s new hand during the mission. But the robotics team planned to coordinate an online training session this summer with IMAHelps and Ecuador’s Ministry of Health, which has agreed to produce Samantha’s newest hand using their 3D printer, which they are still learning how to operate. IMAHelps will continue to follow up with the Ministry and our volunteers in Ecuador to make sure Samantha’s writing hand is delivered to her as soon as possible.

            Samantha, in fact, was the catalyst that led IMAHelps to connect with robotics students at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland last year and to invite them to join IMAHelps on our medical mission to Quito, Ecuador in early August 2023.

            The IMAHelps team first met Samantha during a medical mission planning trip to Quito in late March last year. “What I would like most,” Samantha told us when we first met her, “is to be able to write again.” Although she is from a poor family in the 9,400-foot foot Andean mountain city of Latacunga, Samantha is a hardworking student who dreams of becoming a doctor someday. “I want to be useful,” she said.

 

The Cleveland robotics students work with Samantha to ensure that her new arm and hand prosthesis is operating correctly.

Photo courtesy of Angelo DiFusco.

 

Yariselle Andujar from the robotics team in Cleveland, Ohio takes the measurements of an Ecuadorian woman needing a prosthesis.

Photo courtesy of Angelo DiFusco.

 

 “Please do something,” her father, Ramón Chiluisa, told us through tears. “She’s my daughter.”

 
 
 
 

Working as an aircraft painter, Chiluisa explained that he simply didn’t have the financial ability to provide Samantha with the prosthetic care she needs. But while IMAHelps regularly provides leg prosthetics for impoverished patients on each of our weeklong medical missions, we haven’t typically provided hand or arm prosthetics because they are far more difficult and time-consuming to customize for each patient.

            Two weeks after our first meeting with Samantha, however, a miracle took place. The Rotary E-Club of World Peace invited IMAHelps CoFounder Ines Allen and Communications Director Jeff Crider to give a Zoom presentation on IMAHelps’ medical mission work. After hearing about IMAHelps’ prosthetics work, Bradshaw, the community engagement coordinator for the Great Lakes Science Center, said he was mentoring a team of high school robotics students who had an interest in humanitarian projects. He said his students had the ability to produce mechanical arms and hands. He asked if there would be a possibility for his students to collaborate with IMAHelps.

            Crider and Allen then shared Samantha’s story and her dream of being able to write again. The rest, as they say, is history. Crider and Bradshaw followed up with each other with multiple phone calls, with Crider providing Samantha’s measurements, which were relayed to him by Samantha’s family. Crider later traveled to Cleveland to meet Bradshaw and the robotics team and to pick up their initial prosthesis for Samantha, which he personally delivered to Samantha last October along with other IMAHelps volunteers.

            It was also in October last year when the IMAHelps team met Elvis and learned of his need for a mechanical left hand, which the robotics team agreed to produce. The IMAHelps team met again with Samantha, Elvis and other young amputees in February of this year during a medical mission planning trip to Quito. By that time, Crider had invited Bradshaw to join the IMAHelps team on our early August 2023 medical mission to Quito so that they could work directly with Samantha, Elvis, Ariana and other patients.

 

            Crider said the robotics team’s work has been life-changing in both directions, not only helping child amputees in Ecuador, but inspiring the robotics students in Cleveland’s inner city neighborhoods. Bradshaw agrees.
            “These are inner-city kids that all come from ‘rough’ neighborhoods,” Bradshaw explained. “Their classrooms are overcrowded and their schools are all underfunded. Many of these students have been told their whole lives that they were trouble-makers who would never amount to much.”
            But under Bradshaw’s leadership, with assistance from Chip Redding, a retired NASA engineer, and Peter Buca, a retired vice president of innovation and technology for Parker Hannifin, the students are not only making robots to compete in national and international competitions, but they are designing and producing prosthetics for veterans and children of limited means. The students produced prosthetics for veteran amputees before expanding their efforts to include underserved children in the greater Cleveland area. And now, by collaborating with IMAHelps, the students are able to provide life-changing prosthetics for impoverished children around the world.

            “Before participating in this program,” Bradshaw added, “the greatest aspiration some of these students had was to get a job at the local Walmart. Many of them saw themselves as victims, hopelessly trapped in an endless cycle of poverty and despair. Now they are talking about which college, university or trade school they will be applying to. Today, they are confident young men and women who see themselves as innovators and problem-solvers, capable of using science, technology, engineering and math to take on some of the world’s greatest challenges. They are empowered and feel that there is nothing that can’t be accomplished with careful planning and teamwork.”

            But no matter how much advance planning is done, there are always surprises on medical missions, including with new patients who show up seeking treatment.

            One patient who showed up on the first day of the IMAHelps mission to Quito, Ecuador was 27-year-old Jefferson Aguirre, whose arms and legs were amputated after he was electrocuted while cutting pipe last February.

            Our prosthetist, Robert Openshaw, immediately got to work making Jefferson prosthetic legs, which he tried on after a couple of days. Our physical therapist, Gloria Soto-Reyes, then worked with Jefferson each day, teaching him how to walk. 

            The robotics team, for their part, took Jefferson’s measurements and told him they would design new arms and hands for him, which Gloria and Jeff will provide to him on a return trip to Quito in a few months.
            "You have given me a reason to live,” Jefferson told us through tears. On the last day of the IMAHelps mission to Quito, Jefferson confidently walked out of the hospital on his new prosthetic legs to the cheers of our volunteers and local hospital staff members. 
            “Hope. That’s what our volunteers provide,” Crider said after seeing Jefferson walk out of the hospital on his own. “We are lucky to have these talented humanitarians working with us to change lives. We plan to continue our collaborative work with the Cleveland’s robotics team and hope they can join us on every mission moving forward.”

           In fact, the robotics team will not only be spending the next few months designing new arms and hands for Jefferson. Bradshaw said his team took measurements for close to a dozen additional child amputees, whose arms and hands Jeff and Gloria will deliver to them when they return to Ecuador with Jefferson’s prosthetics.