Top 20 team in the 2018 High School Utah Entrepreneur Challenge at the University of Utah. lassonde.utah.edu/hsuec

1. By. Andrew Rich

2. A freedom taken
In order to find a problem, I looked to the people around me. In my
search, I talked to my friend Carter, who has cerebral palsy. A problem
he has is that he cannot feed himself. Could you imagine not being able
to feed yourself. He is too embarrassed to eat with friends because they
would have to feed him. I wanted to give him a freedom back that
cerebral palsy took away from him. I wanted to help him so that he
could feed himself.

3. A problem to a community
• There are over 500,000 people in the United states with cerebral palsy,
and even more with people other ailments that cause this same problem.
That’s a large portion of our community that can’t even feed themselves.
We need to help improve their lives. We can’t cure cerebral palsy, but we
can help improve the lives of anyone with it the best we can. It’s a whole
community, and It’s the people around us. I know a handful of people with
cerebral palsy, and making something to help them feed themselves would
greatly improve their lives.

4. It’s already
fixed?
I decided that I wanted to make a robot that would
help them eat. A robot that they could control.
While doing research I discovered that they have
already invented a feeding robot. The catch is that
it is 5000 dollars. That’s a lot of money, money that
a lot of families do not have. The one thing wrong
with innovations for the special needs, is that they
are so expensive. A whole portion of the community
is eliminated, because they can’t afford it. Plus it’s
hard to transport.

5. Your friendly neighborhood feeding bot
• After figuring out that there has already been a bot, I needed to find a
way to improve it. I set off to make it cheaper, and easily
transportable. That’s where Seymour comes in. Seymour is a robotic
arm, powered by hydraulics, that is easy to use, transport, and will
help people with cerebral palsy feed themselves. It will have a 1‐foot
arm that can lift, lower and rotate. It will lower, scoop up food, lift,
and rotate the food into the controller’s mouth. The bowl will also
rotate to allow the changing of food scooped up. All of this will be
controlled by a one hand controller (since people with cerebral palsy
can only use one hand). It will use chap materials like wood, plastic,
and smaller hydraulics to keep it affordable for most people.

6. One small
robot, one
giant impact
This robot can give a freedom back to
hundreds of thousands of people who lost
the freedom to feed themselves. It will help
improve the lives of a community that
absolutely deserves it. It will help people
like Carter, and it will help make our world
a better place to live. I hope this will be a
start to a new generation of cheap and
accessible innovations for the special needs
community.

7. Design

8. Design

9. Seymour
Mk.1
Working prototype