Sara Mustafa remembers her Uncle Omar’s last few months of life vividly.
It was his end-of-life struggles with cancer that inspired the UTSA engineering senior to work with a small team of fellow students to create a prototype robot that allows disabled or paralyzed individuals to feed themselves with little to no caregiver assistance, helping them regain a measure of independence.
Months before passing away in 2016, Mustafa’s uncle became paralyzed and was dependent on others for all his care — including eating, Mustafa said. The once active man struggled with his lack of autonomy, she recalls. With her senior design project on the horizon, his memory came to mind, she said.
“Minutes before the project proposal was due, I looked at the picture that I have with my uncle sitting on my desk and I was like, ‘You know, I wish I could do something in his remembrance,'” Mustafa said. “I thought, ‘What can I do to improve the quality of life for people who are physically disabled?'”
Mustafa quickly called her classmate and friend Josie Torres to brainstorm on that train of thought. Their resulting idea would lead to the construction of the OMAR prototype — or the Optimized Meal Assistance Robot.
The OMAR was one of 90 student-built projects on display last week at UTSA’s Fall 2023 Tech Symposium — UTSA’s once-a-semester showcase of prototypes and research by engineering students that allows them to compete for project funding. The students present their project to a panel of local engineers who rank the projects.
The prototype is a robotic arm that works using facial tracking software and customized bowls and utensils. It also boasts a portable, rechargeable battery, an emergency stop button and its own mobile app.
Small enough to sit on a table, the OMAR was attached to a base with three bowl holders each holding a small dish of candy.
The prototype’s six creators, including Mustafa, stood next to the small robot, demonstrating how it operated. Grasping a special 3-D-printed spoon in a claw clasp, the OMAR dipped its arm into each bowl before dumping Skittles, M&M’s and jelly beans into observers’ outstretched hands.
Attached to the claw are two small cameras that allow the robot to use facial recognition and tracking software to “see” a person’s face and spoon food into the mouth, said Caleb Champion, one of the group members responsible for the robot’s construction. Champion told the OMAR which bowl to scoop candy from by hitting a button on a Bluetooth PlayStation 4 controller, a workaround being used until the team can build its own remote, he explained.
“The idea is for [the OMAR] to only detect a face and a mouth,” he said. “We obviously don’t want to just stick a spoon in somebody’s mouth if their mouth isn’t open — so we want to ensure that the mouth is open and ready for that next bite.”
An automatic stop button allows the individual eating to stop the machine if it malfunctions or performs a command they didn’t want it to perform, Champion said. There’s also a button that makes the robot buzz loudly if help from a caretaker is needed.
Torres, who did much of the design and implementation for the phone app, showed how the app also provides information for the user or their caregiver, from answering frequently asked questions to giving video tutorials on how to troubleshoot the OMAR.
Champion said the OMAR project proposal immediately grabbed his attention and he was eager to help build it.
“I was very moved by [Mustafa’s] story,” he said. “I have family that have disabilities that are similar to this, and if I can give them that sense of independence, give them that sense of like, ‘I can take care of myself’ as small as just feeding themselves, I feel like I can do that for any other person’s family member, and that made me feel very passionate about this project.”
While automated feeding robots for disabled individuals currently exist, they are clunky and have a price tag starting around $6,000, Mustafa said. She and the group would like to be able to sell the completed OMAR at around $1,300 to make it affordable for more people, she said.
At the symposium, the team won third place and a $2,000 cash prize. They plan to use those funds to keep working on improvements to the OMAR even after graduation, Mustafa said. She and the other five students hope their robot will be able to be mass-produced someday in the near future, she added.
Mustafa said she thinks her uncle would be proud of her and the OMAR.
“I feel like he would like it,” she said. “Giving a person who’s physically disabled the ability to be independent, again — that’s a good feeling.”
