Human hands assembled plastic fingers.
Members of Cavalimbs, an organization comprising mostly University of Virginia engineering students, are in the early stages of designing and constructing an affordable prosthetic arm.
“We’re going through a couple of phases of building a robotic arm that we hope to turn into a prosthetic arm to be able to help people in need – and possibly, in the future, to create something that’s more affordable,” said Maya Golubkova, a second-year mechanical engineering student who is the founder and president of the group. “This is a way to have engineers be able to work together, actually applying their skills from the classroom.”
With an interest in biomedical engineering, Golubkova investigated prosthetics, but thought the expense made many of them prohibitive for some people. The group is new this year, founded by Golubkova and her friend Emma Camiolo, a second-year civil engineering major from Atlanta. Golubkova paid for the initial materials from her own pocket, but the group recently received a $3,335 boost from the Jefferson Trust.
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“The Jefferson trustees liked that this project is student-led, involves students from across the University and has a social entrepreneurship mindset,” said Andrea Seese, the associate director of promotions and events for the Jefferson Trust. “It was a well-written proposal.”
“I’ve always been interested in the more biomedical aspect of engineering,” Golubkova said. “I am pursuing mechanical engineering because I like how things work. I want to be able to create something that has circuitry components to it, and mechanical movements.”
She said about 50 students are involved, with a core group of about 15.
“We all work together,” Camiolo said. “We sit together and talk, and two meetings ago, we were putting together a prototype with all of our 3D-printed pieces. And it’s a lot of fun because you can tell everyone’s really interested, especially the ones who come every time.”
Golubkova said the team found designs online that may have influenced their design, but the entire assembly was made from scratch.
“We made all of our own joints, and everything was 3D-printed from scratch,” Golubkova said. “We could look online, and there are a lot of different designs, but we didn’t like any of the ones that we found.”
Different team members contributed to different sections of the arm.
“It’s all our own,” Golubkova said. “I think the whole point of engineering and being an engineering student is to create things from scratch and learn how things work. And I think it was a cheat and a cop-out if we were to just copy something.”
