About 16 p.c of the worldwide inhabitants—greater than 1 billion individuals—dwell with some type of incapacity, in response to the World Well being Group. Most of the disabilities have an effect on independence and mobility.
Three highschool college students engaged on innovations to assist individuals with disabilities restore motion, translate ideas, and navigate tough terrain had their work showcased at Regeneron’s Worldwide Science and Engineering Truthful (ISEF), held in Might in Phoenix. Their tasks earned them this 12 months’s IEEE Presidents’ Scholarship awards.
IEEE President Mary Ellen Randall offered the awards at a ceremony held throughout the honest. In addition they acquired an IEEE President’s coin, which college students stated was a spotlight of their expertise.
Hollie Tang received this 12 months’s IEEE Presidents’ Scholarship of US $10,000 for her wheelchair navigation system. The award is payable over 4 years of undergraduate college examine and features a complimentary IEEE pupil membership.
Partap Sidhu, the second-place winner, acquired a $600 scholarship for his mind-controlled lower-limb exoskeleton. Third-place winner Calvin Shang Hung acquired a $400 scholarship for his rough-terrain robotic. Sidhu and Hung additionally bought complimentary IEEE pupil memberships.
Established by the IEEE Basis and administered by IEEE Academic Actions, the Presidents’ Scholarship acknowledges highschool college students who reveal an distinctive grasp of electrical engineering, pc science, or one other IEEE area of curiosity.
Controlling actions with a tongue
Holly Tang received the 2026 IEEE Presidents’ Scholarship of US $10,000 for her Tonguage venture, which is a noninvasive, computer-vision-based human-machine interface.Lynn Bowlby
Tang, a sophomore at Wilson Excessive Faculty in Hacienda Heights, Calif., secured the highest prize for her Tonguage venture: a noninvasive, computer-vision-based human-machine interface. Utilizing tongue actions and a normal digital camera, the interface lets customers management a pc and different digital instruments in addition to assistive applied sciences together with wheelchairs. The tongue pad, one of many system’s core options, permits the person’s tongue to perform as a directional cursor, whereas eye blinks function mouse clicks.
Tonguage interprets the individual’s tongue and eye motions into actionable instructions in a number of methods, such because the tongue’s place contained in the mouth and steady motion patterns. The system’s multimodality combines enter from the tongue with different facial cues.
The system features a face-tracking characteristic for error prevention that verifies instructions are coming from the meant person, disregarding anybody else who strikes into the digital camera’s body.
That could be a important security measure for a wheelchair-navigation utility, Tang says.
Accessibility was central to Tang’s mission. She constructed the system to run on comparatively reasonably priced, available laptop computer cameras somewhat than extra pricey specialised {hardware}.
“Mobility circumstances don’t discriminate,” she says. “They’ll have an effect on anybody of any revenue, gender, and socioeconomic standing.”
Tang initially imagined Tonguage as a easy substitute for a keyboard and mouse. The extra analysis she did, although, the extra she realized that it might provide autonomy by purposes similar to wheelchair navigation, robotic arm management, and gaming, she says.
“We’re so targeted on attempting to present individuals autonomy over simply primary human duties that we regularly omit issues like gaming,” she says. “They deserve the liberty to play video games and luxuriate in leisure as nicely.”
Tang, who plans to pursue biomedical engineering, says a go to to a rehabilitation heart solidified her function.
“Together with empathy in your technological resolution is so essential,” she says. “Empathy is tough to show in a classroom, however it may be realized by expertise, and thru really assembly individuals whose lives your work would possibly change.”
Thoughts-controlled exoskeleton
Sidhu, a junior at Bethpage Excessive Faculty, in New York, took second place for NeuroGait, a mind-controlled, lower-limb exoskeleton. He says he was impressed by his volunteer work at a neighborhood heart that lacked elevators. He noticed people with mobility points battle to navigate the three flights of stairs.
NeuroGait operates by studying the Bereitschaftspotential (BP), a faint electrical sample that emerges one to 2 seconds earlier than an individual consciously initiates motion. Utilizing a customized electroencephalogram (EEG) headset and a convolutional neural community (CNN), the system classifies meant actions and sends instructions to a 3D-printed exoskeleton. Fairly than inflexible motors, the go well with depends on pneumatic synthetic muscle mass that Sidhu designed to imitate human anatomy.
“The pneumatic synthetic muscle in itself is so compliant that it’s capable of alter to the constraints of the human physique,” he says.
The technical specs are putting: The CNN achieves a 99.9 p.c accuracy in detecting an individual’s meant motion, whereas the complete system—from the mind’s sign to bodily motion—operates at 95.2 p.c accuracy, in response to the outcomes from 500 trials Sidhu performed.
Maybe most impressively, Sidhu constructed the whole system for about $276, lower than 1 p.c of the $40,000 to $100,000 price ticket of economic exoskeletons, in response to a 2025 income report from Roots Evaluation.
He says he hopes to deliver NeuroGait to the neighborhood heart the place the thought for the venture started.
He attributes his success to staying present with analysis from establishments and organizations similar to Boston Dynamics and MIT.
“To achieve success in analysis,” he says, “it’s a must to know what’s being performed proper now.”
A spider-inspired robotic
Hung, a sophomore at El Cerrito Excessive Faculty, in California, took third place for Math Into Movement: Robotic Hexapod for Hazardous Environments. The six-legged robotic is designed to traverse terrain too unstable for people or standard robotic programs.
With solely weeks earlier than the science honest deadline for entries and no prior electrical engineering expertise, Hung started with an concept impressed by his curiosity in spaceflight: an insectlike robotic. He had spent years watching rovers similar to Curiosity and Perseverance battle on uneven surfaces, main him to hypothesize {that a} hexapod design can be higher for rugged floor.
Because the venture progressed, the humanitarian purposes for his robotic turned clearer, he says. Watching information stories of the earthquake that struck Türkiye in 2023, in addition to conflicts across the globe, Hung tailored his robotic to be used in disasters. The hexapod’s steady tripod strolling gait, wherein three legs keep grounded whereas the opposite three transfer, makes it nicely suited to navigating in collapsed buildings to find survivors or to hold delicate provides similar to insulin in battle zones.
The present model strikes utilizing three mathematical methods. Inverse kinematics converts a goal leg place into the motor angles wanted to achieve it. Linear interpolation breaks every motion right into a collection of smaller steps for smoother movement. And Euclidean transformations translate the robotic’s journey course into directions that every leg can comply with, whatever the manner a leg occurs to be dealing with.
Hung taught himself how you can design a printed circuit board. He additionally taught himself 3D modeling, coding, and soldering. Determining the sophisticated mathematical transformations to coordinate legs dealing with completely different instructions proved to be the hardest hurdle, he says.
After seven months of growth and trial and error, a important circuit board failure in his third model almost ended the venture, he says.
“There was a very sturdy second of ‘Ought to I simply hand over?’” he recollects.
He simplified the design and rebuilt it from the bottom up.
“I simply determined to double down,” he says. The fourth model of the robotic was the primary that efficiently walked throughout his front room flooring.
He advises aspiring engineers that “when you discover the correct venture and it really turns into your ardour, designing it nearly begins to really feel like enjoyable, and that’s what carries you thru.”
Because the three younger innovators reveal, the way forward for engineering goes far past technical ingenuity. A lot is rooted in empathy and a dedication to human welfare.
By means of initiatives such because the IEEE Presidents’ Scholarship, the IEEE Basis showcases and nurtures shiny minds poised to form the following period of assistive expertise and robotics.
For Tang, Sidhu, and Hung, the ISEF stage is just the start. They’ll sit up for impactful careers devoted to advancing expertise for the good thing about humanity.
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