Late to a meeting, Josh Eickmeier is making his way across the Pittsburgh campus, though he can't help but move slowly. He recently injured his leg in a bicycle accident and has to maneuver around on crutches for the next month or so. Coming to a stairway, he places both crutches on the step below him and nervously lowers his weight down to the next. He feels unbalanced, despite his athleticism, as if he could topple over the crutches and nosedive down the staircase. Getting around has turned into an obstacle course. There must be some way to improve mobility on crutches, he thinks, and make them safer on stairs.

He arrives at the mechanical engineering lounge and sits down with Sean Lubner, Edward Burns, Justin Perry, and Steve Oetjen. Friends since they all shared a dorm floor as freshmen, the senior mechanical engineering majors have come together to work on a group project for "Engineering Design 2, Conceptualization and Realization," the capstone course for their undergrad careers at Carnegie Mellon. They have to do what they've been training for during the past three years: identify a need in the market and create an innovative product to fill that need. Instead of just conceptualizing on paper and CAD drawings, they have to go into the campus machine shop and build a prototype, and they have to make it work in one semester within an allocated budget of $450.

Inspired by Eickmeier's accident, the group bounces around ideas about improving bikes and their safety features, but none seem feasible for the project. After hearing Eickmeier's take on the limitations of crutches, they all concur: If the world isn't made for people on crutches, why not make crutches adaptable to the world? The group gets to work.

Months later, Eickmeier demonstrates his group's new and improved crutches at the biannual student design expo, where the 10 other groups in his course are showcasing their products, too. Among the exhibits are thermal insulating blinds, a collapsible bike helmet, reusable RFID parking garage tickets, and an automatic tennis ball sorter. Students and professors, as well as a local TV news camera crew, watch as Eickmeier maneuvers down a nearby staircase. He explains how the group attached an aluminum support leg with a built-in spring mechanism to the crutch. He places the foot of the support leg on the stairs and lowers himself down to the next as the support leg adjusts itself to his shifting weight.

Several expo attendees try it for themselves and experience the added control and security as they go from stair to stair. The crutches are voted Best Final Prototype by the audience.
-Danielle Commisso (HS'06)