Team Hiki Ke He‘e Nalu – Adaptive Surfing

Eric Welton– Project Manager

Eric is the Team Captain and he is in charge of task management, facilitation and organizer of team meetings.

Kristen Asato– Documentation Lead

Kristen is the documentation lead and she is responsible for taking notes, posting team meeting minutes and is in charge of the team website.

Patrick Morlan– System Integrator

Patrick is the system integrator and he is in charge of managing the technical budget of the team and collaborates with each subsystem to ensure unity through the design.

Erik Lemasa – Subsystem Drivetrain Lead

Erik is the lead of the drivetrain subsystem and he is responsible for the drivetrain and gearing system of the vehicle.

Jaynie Gaoiran– Subsystem Chassis Lead

Jaynie is the lead of the chassis subsystem and she is in charge of creating a framework to mount the necessary components of the vehicle.

BoYuan Pang– Subsystem Wheels Lead

Boyuan is the lead of the wheel subsystem and is in charge of the wheel selection and integration to the chassis.

Quintin Collier– Subsystem Recovery and Safety Lead

Quintin is the lead of the recovery subsystem and he is in charge of the design for recovering the user from the ocean to the vehicle. He is also the Safety lead and is responsible for the safety of the team members and the safety of the user of the vehicle.

McKenna Seu– Finance Lead

McKenna is the finance lead and he is in charge of overseeing the financial orders and actively seeks and applys for grants, donations and fundraising.

The Problem:

Our team had the opportunity to attended the event called “Day at the Beach” which is held on the first Saturday of each month by AccesSurf Hawaii. AccesSurf is a nonprofit organization which helps people with disabilities get into the water to surf and swim. While at the event it became very obvious to us how difficult it is for a paraplegic to get into the water to surf. At this event hundreds of volunteers came together to help people with disabilities get in and out of the water to swim and surf.

After interviewing a few paraplegics, it became apparent that many of these surfers want the ability to safely go out and surf on their own without the assists of another person. In fact, one surfer stated that he already surfs on his own by wheeling himself as close to the shoreline as possible. He then drags himself across the sand with his waveski(a type of adaptive surfboard) into the ocean. This method is unsafe, tiring, and uses a lot of energy.

Waveski: an adaptive surfboard

Seeing as this is a major problem in the local surf community it is our team’s mission to provide a method for a person who is paralyzed from the waist down to get from their car into, and out of the water, with their waveski unassisted by another persons.

Goal:

The primary goal of the team is to design and develop a vehicle that can transport a paraplegic surfer with their waveski to and from their car into the ocean and back unassisted. A successful design will achieve that primary objective in helping a paraplegic to become an independent surfer. The strategy of getting the user from the car to the ocean to surfer is to design a vehicle that be loaded and unloaded from a minivan or truck with a person’s waveski. Then can be easily assembled with the waveski and the person on top and can roll over the sand, into the water where it will be anchored to let the user off to go surfing.

Final Design:

Final Design of Vehicle

Our vehicle is divided into four subsystems: the chassis, drivetrain, wheels, and recovery subsystems. With reference to the figure above, the components that belong to the chassis subsystem are the framework, joint plates, uprights, bunks, and rear axle bracket. The drivetrain subsystem includes the two levers, associated gears and axle elements, the center hub of the drive wheel, and all associated gear and axle elements. The wheels subsystem consists of the four wheels, two passive wheels in the front and to drive wheels in the back. While not depicted in the figure, the recovery subsystem includes a positional anchor, flag, and brake system.

How The Vehicle Works:

How The Vehicle Comes Apart.

The vehicle can be taken apart in half (as shown in the figure above) so that the user can easily lift it in and out of their car. The front wheels are also detachable for easy storing.

The operations of who the surfer will use the vehicle is as follows:

The user exits the vehicle with their wheelchair and then proceeds to unload the waveski and vehicle parts from their automobile. Then the user assembles the vehicle by putting the two halves of the vehicle together and attaching the wheels to the vehicle base. Once the vehicle is put together, the waveski is set on top of the vehicle. Now assembled, the user transfers themselves onto the assembled vehicle and places their regular wheelchair back into their automobile. The vehicle will roll from the car to the water under the power of the user with the aid of a gearing and lever system that allows for the use of mechanical energy to create more force at the wheel/ground (especially sand) interface. Once in the water, the user can paddle the waveski, still attached to the vehicle, a few feet away from shore where the vehicle can be anchored. Then the waveski will detach from the vehicle. At this point the vehicle remains anchored while the user enjoys surfing.

In the recovery portion of the process, the waveski attaches to the vehicle while in the water and un-anchors by physically pulling up the anchor. The vehicle and waveski combination is paddled back to shore. On shore, the vehicle rolls up the shore gradient and across the terrain back to the automobile using the drivetrain subsystem. The user transfers over to the regular wheelchair at the automobile and disassembles the waveski vehicle pair into its separable parts. The parts are loaded back into the vehicle and the user can depart.

Gantt Chart of Overall Schedule: