Editor’s Note: This is one of a series of profiles of the Wisconsin Idea in action. See past profiles we have published.

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Professor’s personal challenge develops into career shift

Like most people, mechanical engineering professor Jay Martin never really understood the challenges of living with a severe physical disability until his teenaged son, Liam, was paralyzed in a diving accident in 1999. As Martin sat by his son’s hospital bedside for 10 weeks afterward, the problems came to him in an anguishing torrent.

Desperate for solutions, he began to devise his own. “I kept noticing all of these things that could be so rapidly improved through the use of engineering and design,” says Martin. When Liam developed his first pressure sore, Martin found a self-turning mattress that could prevent new ones. He dreamed up a system that would allow his son, immobilized in a halo vest, to call the nurse. He even saw how to better arrange the hospital room.

“It just blossomed,” he says. “I think I had an idea a day for a long time.”

Mechanical engineering professor Jay Martin poses with his RV-8A two-seater airplane at Morey Field in Middleton. Martin is working on a lift system to make it easier for people with physical disabilities to fly in his plane.

Photo: Aaron Mayes

Martin couldn’t know it then, but those private musings would become the foundation for a new research center at UW–Madison. Established in 2002, the Center for Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology (UW-CREATe) takes an engineer’s approach to improving the lives of people with disabilities, the elderly and others struggling with physical ailments. That means meticulously researching and designing the best possible technological solutions to meet people’s needs.

“We look at customer requirements and then we ask, ‘How do we meet them and optimize [the design]?’” says Martin, who is UW-CREATe’s director. “If we don’t think about optimization, we’re not really doing design, and we’re not really solving the problem.”

Today, more than 10 faculty and staff researchers and four times as many undergraduate and graduate students carry out the center’s academic goals of teaching, learning and research. But Martin also infuses UW-CREATe with something more: his will to see its technology in widespread use one day.

“We want to have an impact on the lives of people with disabilities,” he says. “That’s going to be our criterion for success.”

At the time of Liam’s accident, Martin was director of UW–Madison’s Engine Research Center and had studied internal combustion for nearly 20 years. But upon returning to work after his son left the hospital, he found that disabilities, rather than engines, were constantly on his mind. He soon began pondering a switch to research on assistive technology.

He first discussed the notion with his mentor, mechanical engineering professor emeritus John Mitchell. Martin half-expected Mitchell to caution him against making a hasty decision. “But his response was, ‘Wow, this is a great idea,’” Martin says. His department chair was equally enthusiastic.

Pretty soon, other mechanical engineering professors, including Frank Fronczak, Nicola Ferrier and the late Terry Richard, started expressing their interest in doing similar research.

“Before I knew it, we had a little group going,” Martin says.

In the years since, their work has included robotic systems to aid people with disabilities, a hybrid gas-electric power source for wheelchairs and a glove-like device to restore function to inanimate hands. More recently, mechanical engineering professors Heidi Ploeg and Darryl Thelen have added projects to address problems brought on by age, injury and disease, including improved hip replacement systems and surgical methods to correct gait.

Given the myriad challenges people with disabilities face, deciding where to focus next can be tough, says Martin. “I try to pick on things that I think are the most critical to quality of life,” he says. “That, and safety.”

Martin displays a prototype support pole designed help lift people with physical disabilities into his plane.

Photo: Aaron Mayes

In fact, an accident suffered by a disabled colleague precipitated one of his recent projects. Joe Entwisle is a policy analyst who works with UW-CREATe on issues such as barriers to employment for people with disabilities. Like many people who can’t move their limbs, Entwisle drives an electric wheelchair with his mouth using a control system known as a “sip and puff.” One day, as Entwisle test-drove a new wheelchair down the sidewalk, the sip and puff became disconnected from the chair’s electronics and motor, leaving him unable to steer or stop just as he needed to turn right.

“At that point I knew there was nothing I could do,” he says. “I was going straight for the curb.”

As the chair hit the street, Entwisle toppled out, breaking his shoulder and suffering a mild concussion as a result. When he told Martin about the incident a week later, the engineer was “pretty hot,” says Entwisle. “He said, ‘What do you mean there’s no emergency kill-switch? You’ve got no way to stop the chair?’”

Soon afterward, Martin sent a pair of students to meet with Entwisle and figure out what could be done. Their solution integrates seamlessly with the sip and puff, yet gives wheelchair-users a way to stop, if the device fails, by simply activating a switch with the tongue or biting down on a sensor.

Their solution won an award last year from the Rehabilitation Engineering Society of North America, and Entwisle agrees it’s “pretty slick.” What impresses him most is how inexpensively the students put it together. “UW-CREATe finds technological solutions to problems that won’t break the bank,” he says.

The center will give Entwisle a prototype model of the kill-switch for his own use. But to get the technology into the hands of more people, UW-CREATe must forge partnerships with industry, says Martin.

It recently undertook one such collaboration with Bruno Independent Living Aids of Oconomowoc, Wis., a company of 300 employees whose products include stair-lifts for the home and devices for lifting wheelchairs in and out of vehicles.

Last fall, two teams of undergraduate students worked with Bruno’s research-and-development engineers to design and evaluate new concepts for products outside the company’s existing offerings. With their unfettered creativity and fresh eyes, students are perfect for this activity, says Dick Keller, Bruno’s director of business development. “They really have no preconceived notions of what a product should be,” he says. “I think that’s very important at the conceptual stage.”

Although the relationship is just beginning and will undoubtedly evolve, Bruno has been pleased so far with the results, Keller says. “The students are finding some surprising solutions for the disabled people who our company serves. Whether their ideas result in a product remains to be seen, but they’re certainly moving in some rewarding directions.”

Over time, Martin has come to appreciate his own new direction. “The switch to this field was the best thing I could have done, because of what I’ve learned from the people I now work with and for,” he says. “I’m a different person than I was five years ago.”

One sign of the change is his renewed enthusiasm for design. “In some ways I love design so much, I don’t care what I design,” he says. “But I really want to come to work to design assistive technology. So, that’s a huge benefit for me.”

Even Martin’s hobbies reflect his newfound passion. The small plane he recently finished constructing from a kit — and now flies all over the country — not only bears many of his design modifications, but a stencil of a wheelchair accessibility symbol, as well. He soon hopes to build a lift that can bring a wheelchair onboard. Liam wants to fly, too.