Charlie Gutierrez

Flywheel Fanny Pack Balance Assist

According to the CDC, 75% of Americans aged 70 years or older have balance issues, which increases to 88% for Americans aged 80 years or older. And across all ages, 19 million people reported some mobility difficulty due to a very wide range of issues affecting among others, the inner ear, nerves, brain, joints, or vision. As there is currently no low-cost and hands-free device on the market for balance impaired individuals, this often leads to them being proactively placed in burdensome wheelchairs.
Our goal is to create a gyroscopic stabilizing device positioned around the center of balance that offers an informational push towards the upright torso position. This allows the user to self correct and relearn balance, helping a wide range of people across different ages and with different disorders.

Composite LiftWalker for Shurouq

          The picture above shows our final prototype, successfully lifting our team member Daniel Martinez.

The goal of this senior project was to design and build a new version of our project sponsor Charlie Gutierrez’s LiftWalker for Shurouq, our client.

Shurouq is a young woman who lives with her family in Egypt. She was born with multiple health conditions which resulted in leg contractures that have since left her unable to walk.

Charlie’s device, the New LiftWalker, has helped dozens of people with disabilities similar to Shurouq’s. However, Charlie’s standard design is made of stainless steel weighing up to 80 lb, which is both difficult and expensive to send to Egypt. For this reason, Charlie turned to the Mechanical Engineering Department at Cal Poly, challenging us to redesign his LiftWalker out of lightweight composite materials.