Stairway to School: An exploration into a unified entryway device for use on Volkswagen ‘Classroom on Wheels’ vehicles in rural Brazil
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Children in rural Brazil often face long journey times, challenging terrain and other impediments in traveling to attend school. Decreased school participation has negative impacts on the personal, social and economic development that is so critical to the largely low-income populations in these areas. Of particular concern is that many extant school bus designs in these regions feature separate entryways for those with mobility impairments and those without, devaluing disabled people’s sense of personhood and further discouraging school participation in those most vulnerable. This project, in response to this issue, seeks to improve educational accessibility by reducing the stigma and separation that disabled students often face in traveling to and participating in school. The Volkswagen Innovation and Engineering Center California (VW IECC) is developing a ‘mobile classroom’ concept; a sustainable, high ground-clearance, school bus-like vehicle that itself serves as a classroom - bringing the physical learning environment directly to the doorstep of students in underserved communities. Contributing to this vision, our team - as our final capstone project for the Stanford University Bachelor of Science degree program in Mechanical Engineering (BSME) - has developed an entryway system for this vehicle that can be used by both able-bodied students, wheelchair users, and children on the autism spectrum. Over the course of twenty weeks, we scoped, researched, designed, prototyped and tested a device that meets the key user and engineering requirements we initially set for the project in collaboration with Volkswagen and in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Our design centers around a cantilevered lift platform, supported by extruded aluminum arms in a four-bar arrangement; lifting power is provided by two electromechanical linear actuators. A folding staircase automatically deploys as the lift descends, allowing for easy entry and exit by the majority of users; wheelchair users simply roll-on, rise, roll-off. The final prototype, built at 50% scale due to space and budget constraints, has proved capable of lifting a mass of 300lbs a height of 15 inches. Our modeling indicates that our successful test results would scale favorably to a full-size prototype in a future iteration with minimal changes to the design concept.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Publication date | March 27, 2024; 2023 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Ojeaburu, Henry |
|---|---|
| Author | Jones, Kaige |
| Author | Diaz, Jared |
| Author | Paisley, Finn |
| Advisor | Van Dalsem, William |
| Advisor | Marable, Melissa |
| Sponsor | Volkswagen Group of America |
Subjects
| Subject | design |
|---|---|
| Subject | mechanical engineering |
| Subject | wheelchairs |
| Subject | school buses |
| Subject | accessibility |
| Subject | austism spectrum |
| Subject | Brazil |
| Subject | Volkswagen |
| Subject | mobility |
| Subject | lift |
| Subject | stairlift |
| Subject | actuators |
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Report |
Bibliographic information
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- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Ojeaburu, H., Jones, K., Diaz, J., and Paisley, F. (2023). Stairway to School: An exploration into a unified entryway device for use on Volkswagen ‘Classroom on Wheels’ vehicles in rural Brazil. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/st686dw1132. https://doi.org/10.25740/st686dw1132.
Collection
ME170 Mechanical Engineering Design
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