Azelia's Walker

A Biomedical Engineering student, KC Balfour, two Mechanical Engineering students, Jayne Benedict and Gabrielle Merkin, and one Industrial Engineering student, Jordan Ramsey, make up the interdisciplinary senior project team of Azelia’s Walker. The goal of Azelia’s Walker is to create a custom walker for an 8-year-old girl in the San Luis Obispo Community, named Azelia, who has decreased motor control. Her current walker does not suit her active and energetic lifestyle, so Azelia’s Walker is challenged to design and manufacture a collapsible all-terrain walker that best suits Azelia’s needs. Throughout the academic year, Azelia’s Walker participated in the brain-storming and iteration process to produce a final design, created a manufacturing plan, and fabricated a prototype. Several key design features of the new walker are its all-terrain ability, height adjustments, portability, and ergonomic features. This report will take you, the reader, through Azelia’s Walker senior project team’s design and fabrication process. This project culminated in a to-scale prototype. Although the final product succeeded in meeting its all-terrain and portability requirements, the walker was deemed unusable for Azelia due to certain safety concerns outlined in the report. The members of Azelia’s Walker have thoroughly enjoyed this design process and have learned a great deal about the engineering research and design (R&D), analysis, fabrication, and testing process.