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Designs created by freshman engineering students at Whitworth University may one day help create toys for Spokane children with disabilities.

The semesterlong engineering project is a collaboration between Whitworths engineering and physical therapy departments the latter of which provides direct services to Spokane residents, including young children. These young children have access to toys in their waiting room, but these toys are not always inclusive to children who have disabilities. This semester students in Professor David Schipfs Intro to Engineering class took specifications developed by physical therapy students to create an electric toy car inclusive for children with certain disabilities.

For Schipf, it was important for these students to think about how their designs should be accessible to as many people as possible. The project could be the first step in creating an inclusive toy design lab at Whitworth, Schipf said.

God gives us all different skills and opportunities in life. And I think its important for these students to learn while theyre in school that theyre given a great opportunity to get an engineering degree with these skills that can be used to help a lot of people, he said Monday following his students design presentations.

The toy car designs are based on the needs of a Spokane child who received services from the universitys physical therapy department approximately 10 years ago. A toddler at the time when they received services, this child did not have forearms extending beyond the elbow and used prosthetics in their daily life. Split into two teams, half the class developed an electric toy car whose controller could be used by the child with their prosthetic, while the other team built the toy to be functional without the use of a prosthetic.

One groups remote used cups placed on joysticks where arms can be placed and moved to maneuver the electric car. The remote is also held up by a harness mounted to the body. The other groups controller was modified to be controlled by a prosthetic without the dexterity of fingers. The cars were designed with a small child in mind. One car was modeled after a Tesla, while the other sported a drawn-on lightning bolt for added effect.

Freshman engineering student Noah Bleeker said they tried to create the design as simply as they could while following the parameters of this childs disability.

A lot of the principles that go into disability inclusion can also just be applied to general simplification of design. Its important to make sure that youre not creating things that are insanely hard to use for anybody, Bleeker said.

The student designs are not yet near where they need to be for safe use by real-life children. But the prototypes will be worked on by new classes in future semesters until they can be integrated into the physical therapy department.

The end goal is for the physical therapy department to be able to bring local children into their clinic and have these children engage in normal play with these inclusive toys, Schipf said. Id say wed need to iterate at least three more times from this first attempt. But we really want to move toward having a dedicated lab for inclusive toy design and prototyping here at Whitworth.

The engineering professor also added he would love to partner with a specific local family whose child could make use of a new toy tailored to their disability.

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In teaching disability-inclusive engineering, Whitworth University professors hope to open lab creating inclusive toys for ... - The Spokesman Review

James Seaman takes on the role of Director of Engineering, and Nathanael Dannenberg joins as Sales Manager. Zayndu prepares for the rapid expansion of its cold plasma seed treatment and priming process into the global controlled environment agriculture sector.

Zayndu has developed a cold plasma seed treatment system, ActivatedAir. The process treats and primes seeds, resulting in synchronized germination and enhanced plant growth. The firm sees huge potential for its solution and is growing its team to meet the market's demands.

The new Director of Engineering is James Seaman, who joins Zayndu from FireAngel Safety Technology. James's initial focus will be establishing global best practices in Zayndu's manufacturing facility, ensuring the company can meet the demand for ActivatedAir systems.

"Sales interest is running at an unprecedented high worldwide," says James. "Scaling manufacturing faster than customer demand is a huge focus for us. I aim to get ahead of customer orders and build stock of the systems so we don't hold back growers from accessing our revolutionary technology."

James also leads the development of next-generation initiatives, such as SeedCloud, Zayndu's cloud-based platform that remotely monitors the performance of every system globally. SeedCloud recently won Zayndu a gold award for digital technology innovation at the Made in the Midlands awards.

James Seaman and Nathanael Dannenberg

"With SeedCloud, every Zayndu machine worldwide is connected to our monitoring service. The system monitors every single treatment our systems apply, continuously reporting back over 160 parameters from each machine.

"This enables us to monitor the health of the plasma and mechanical systems, diagnose any issues, and even identify training requirements for operators."

Nathanael Dannenberg is well-known in the UK horticulture sector, having been the UK and Ireland Horticulture Commercial Leader for Philips Lighting. He has extensive experience introducing the latest growing technology to glasshouses and vertical farms.

Having come from retail lighting into horticulture, Nathanael has become passionate about the sector.

"There are all these challenges around energy prices, labour shortages, and disease, and yet growers are doing some amazing things," says Nathanael. "It's a great industry to be part of, and Zayndu's technology represents some of the most exciting technology on offer to growers now.

"The UK's AgTech space is really strong. Considering how influential the Dutch have been historically, some of the more exciting technology is coming from the UK now."

Nathanael's initial focus will be on UK customers, but with growing interest in Zayndu's technology in North America and the Gulf states, he expects to work with customers in these markets in the near future.

Ralph Weir, CEO of Zayndu, welcomed the new appointments. "Zayndu is growing at such a rate that we have to hire the best people to support our ambitions and our customers' enthusiasm," announces Ralph. "James and Nathanael's experience is invaluable; they are joining at a very exciting time."

For more information: Zayndu+44 (0) 1509 276225 [emailprotected] http://www.zayndu.com

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Cold plasma seed treatment system developers expand engineering and sales teams - hortidaily.com

Engineers Adam Keating and Jeremy Andrews were tired of using spreadsheets and screenshots to collab with teammates so they launched a startup, CoLab, to build a better way.

The two met as undergraduates at Memorial University of Newfoundland, where they studied mechanical engineering together. While they were completing their last internships prior to graduating (Andrews at Tesla, Keating at health startup Reflexion Medical), they noticed that professional engineering teams were relying on clunky tools namely spreadsheets and PowerPoint decks to get collaborative work done.

We experienced firsthand the downsides of piecing together critical design reviews by sending screenshots of designs back and forth over email, Keating told TechCrunch in an interview. It led to frustratingly long review cycles, endless admin work and issues slipping through the cracks, despite everyones best efforts.

Being entrepreneurial types, Keating and Andrews decided to start a company, which they called CoLab, to build the mechanical engineering collaboration suite that they themselves would want to use. The companys tools, which Keating says are now being used by teams at Ford, Johnson Controls and Schneider Electric, let engineers review design files, capture and track feedback and document issues from a single dashboard.

Using CoLab, multiple engineers and cross-functional stakeholders can review designs together and build off one anothers feedback, Keating, now CoLabs CEO, said. CoLab pulls together design discussions previously lost in emails, spreadsheets and notebooks into a platform that integrates back into enterprise systems like product lifecycle management, making it easier for engineers to focus on decision making with the right data available.

CoLab stores customer design data, such as 3D models and engineering drawings, in its cloud. Built-in sharing tools allow engineers to send files to one or more suppliers while keeping select info, like feedback and comments, private.

AI isnt currently a major part of the CoLab experience, but Keating says it will be in the next few months. CoLab plans to use its growing customer data in an anonymized and privacy-preserving way, Keating pledges to build AI models that help engineers make more informed decisions while automating routine tasks and admin work.

CoLab has a large volume of user-generated natural language data design feedback that doesnt always get captured in other enterprise systems, Keating said. As a result, CoLab can explain and analyze why designs evolve based on human insight. CoLab not only understands how a design changed, but also why it changed.

In the meantime, Colab, which operates on a software-as-a-service model, appears to be doing just fine financially; Keating says that revenue has doubled in the past six months. He expects paid add-ons set to be released this year and next to boost profits even further.

CoLab today announced that it raised $21 million in a Series B funding round led by Insight Partners with participation from Y Combinator, Killick Capital and Pelorus VC.

The $21 million, which brings CoLlabs total capital to $40 million, was specifically raised with the intention of half of it accelerating the scale-up of the existing go-to-market motion and the other half being invested in bigger bets like AI, he said. Much of the investment will go into expanding the team after building a very efficient business in the past few years.

CoLab aims to grow its workforce of 86 people, most of whom are based in Newfoundland, CoLabs headquarters, to ~120 people by the end of the year as the company expands to Canada and the U.S.

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CoLab's collaborative tools for engineers line up $21M in new funding - TechCrunch