A student from Nottingham Trent University has emerged as the overall winner of the first annual Engineering for Access award, to find the brightest up and coming engineers in the UK – and has won £5,000 towards the cost of having his design made.
Inspired to create a solution for his partner’s brother who suffers from epilepsy, Cameron Lyon, an undergraduate Biomedical Engineering student at Nottingham Trent, designed a pillow that can detect seizures in the night.
The award asked undergraduate students from any engineering discipline to design a product with the aim of helping to improve the lives of people living with a disability. They were then judged by personal injury specialists claims.co.uk and product innovation experts Bang Creations. Cameron says he is over the moon to win the accolade;
“I am ecstatic about winning! It has been a long road from designing my project to this point but it has been worth every part! I’m most excited about trying out the FGB sensors and working with the university to try to develop the pillow. Personally, I have always loved the hands-on work in engineering.”
As part of his prize for winning, Cameron will work side by side with Bang Creations to bring his product to life, as well as lecturers at Nottingham Trent University.
“I’m super excited to share the news. I would like to thank Claims.co.uk and Bang Creations for picking my design – I am looking forward to working with Bang Creations on this project” Cameron said.
Cameron’s design saw off tough competition from other shortlisted students from across the UK, which included innovatively adapted wheelchairs and a mounted robotic arm.
Qimei Zhang, a lecturer in Engineering at Nottingham Trent, says the university is proud of Cameron and that they look forward to supporting Cameron in producing the pillowcase: “I am extremely excited about this fantastic opportunity that Cameron has secured. Obviously, it will be an extremely valuable experience for him to work with Claims.co.uk and Bang Creations to bring his idea to life. I cannot wait to see our sensors being applied for monitoring of night time seizures.”
The Winning Invention
Cameron clinched the prize with his a fibreoptic pillowcase to detect nighttime seizures.
The Pillowcase contains a a network of fibreoptic cables with strain FGB sensors to detect small rapid movements in the sleep, the muscle spasms that take place during a seizure, to alert a carer to help.
The pillow was designed to be portable, therefore allowing the user the ability to sleep safely in places other than their own bed (for example, a child might be able to take this to a friend’s house for a sleepover).
