STEM-In-Action Spring Scoop: Team Heely Wheelys

It’s that time of the week again! In case you haven’t been following along, for the last several weeks we have been catching up with our STEM-In-Action grant recipient teams from our 2019 eCYBERMISSION year. Curious as to what that grant entails? The U.S. Army Educational Outreach Program (AEOP) STEM-In-Action Grant awards eCYBERMISSION teams up to $5,000 to develop their projects into mature and scalable solutions in their community. Five teams all over the country were awarded this prize and for the past few weeks we have been catching up with them to see how their projects have been progressing since the Fall. Today, we’re catching up with Team Heely Wheelys, who are helping to make their Massachusetts community a better place.

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Our project focused on improving the lives of handicapped residents in our community by increasing accessibility to local buildings and store fronts in our community of Andover, MA. The solution included both a Google-Map-like app and a device for automated door opening on buildings. After careful scrutiny and further analysis of our plan, we decided from a budgetary perspective it was best to revamp and essentially streamline our focus, so as to soley work on an app-centric development that will enhance the lives of the handicapped citizens in our community, as well as their caregivers. Overall, we plan to utilize the STEM-In-Action grant funding to help app users identify locations around town that are handicapped accessible.

We have made some changes to our original implementation plan. First, we pivoted from the app/hardware to app-centric development, focusing less on door automation, while still keeping true to the prototype’s design. We also focused on the user and caregiver features of the app to help the user maintain privacy and geolocation, while also enabling the caregiver to view specific information of the user.

Our team meets on a monthly basis. We have spent countless hours revamping the design, the look and the feel of our EasyGo App through AppCooker, making sure to focus on both the User and the Caregiver perspectives. After meeting with a consultant, we were advised the app needs to be scaled down and simplified with minimal buttons, as the budget is not conducive to a full blown app development. Consequently, this prompted us to diligently modify the screens of the EasyGo App. They now contain all pertinent information for both the User and Caregiver with a very simple look and feel.

Our team has been continually plagued for the past few months with one major speed bump: identifying a coder/programmer for our EasyGo App. Due to budgetary constraints, it has been challenging to find a professional coder. Therefore, we have modified our approach and have out to many local high school and college computer labs/departments to identify an individual or group to take on the coding aspect for the prototype for our app as an extracurricular project for school credit or for a fee. The process has been further complication by the holiday season, winter break, flu season and now the upcoming Spring break. We are currently in touch with the coding department of our local library and await an update from a coding teaching as to their availability. We have an Andover High School student with a coding background that may be able to do the programming over the summer break. This backup option may not be feasible, as it would extend the project completion time beyond our original June deadline.

Despite recent challenges, we are very excited to bring out project to completion. We are eager to see all of our hard work make a real impact in our local community. Ideally, we are excited to have our EasyGo App improve the lives of handicapped citizens. Users will be able to identify locations around town that are handicapped accessible; thus improving not only their sense of independence, but their quality of life as well.

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As you can see from our STEM-In-Action teams like Team Heely Wheely and Stumptown Glucobots, just to name a few, eCYBERMISSION students are doing everything they can to make their communities, as well as the world, a better place. Excited to see all the progress Team Heely Wheelys has made over the course of this year, and we’re even more excited to see what they do next.

-Mission Control

Colleen Minan
AEOP Communications & Marketing Specialist
cminan@nsta.org