Local Students Design a 3D Prosthetic Arm
Fort Walton Beach High School students, Maryam Said, Munisa Said, and Ahtziri Gonzalez designed a prosthetic arm that uses salt water as a power source. With this project they hope to empower children to join STEM and go beyond their limitations. The arm was 3D printed, and they used arduino technology to code and process the microcontroller movement. This project took the girls four months to complete, and in the end, the cost to create it amounted to only $200; other similar projects can run upwards of $40,000! Salt water energy is used as the source to power the arm’s motion.
They recently competed in a regional science fair and were awarded three individual awards for their innovative project. The three were recently featured in the Northwest Florida Daily News, the area’s largest daily newspaper and also received an invitation to speak at the Playground Amateur Radio club.
Their hope is to soon make a more advanced version of the arm and plan to create their own salt water battery to compete at next year’s science fair.
On April 23, Maryam and Munisa Said got a chance to attend the 3rd Annual Youth Leadership Conference organized by United for a Good Cause Inc. After reading about their invention in the NWF Daily News, organization officials extended a personal invitation to Maryam, Munisa, and Ahtziri to attend the conference. They not only got the chance to attend as students and hear all the great speakers that participated, but, they also conducted a presentation and showed off their 3D arm to the students, VIP guests and volunteers present. The conference “was an amazing opportunity for us to share and inspire others,” said Maryam. The girls enjoyed the opportunity to speak and said it was also valuable to listen to the other speakers, and gain new information. Munisa said, “As a female, going to conferences is always inspiring, because you get to see real world examples of people turning their dreams into realities”. As part of the conference, Maryam and Munisa also took part in a break-out session in which their group developed an idea and started the planning for a community project they will complete in the next couple of months.
