(Photo Credit: ASET)

By Nathaniel Leigh

Innovative Tech

Grande Prairie resident among 2023 Capstone project of the year winners

Nov 7, 2023 | 10:54 AM

A Grande Prairie resident has received an award for helping invent a new gait analysis device.

Frank Gauthier and his team of fellow NAIT biomedical engineering technology students created the Tippy Tappy Toes, or T3, a portable gait analysis device and entered it into the 2023 Capstone project of the year award.

Gauthier says his team were this year’s winners.

“We’re very proud to be winners of this project and hope to inspire students in the future to also compete in the project,” Gauthier says. “I guess what it means to us is, a good way to motivate ourselves, to be innovative and try to help people with the project coming out of the end of our program essentially.”

(Photo Credit: ASET)

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The Capstone Project of the Year Award is an annual competition featuring projects made by second year students at NAIT, SAIT, Red Deer Polytechnic, and Lethbridge College.

Gauthier says the whole team was surprised when they were announced the winners at the award ceremony held in late October.

“I go to connect with a whole bunch of industry people and other students, and hear about their ideas for their own projects and discuss how we overcame some of the problems of our projects,” he says. “We got to say a few words and thanks to instructors. It was a great time.”

He says the device collects real-time foot angle data uses it to create rehabilitation games for patients recovering from spinal cord damage or other injuries.

“A tour of a local rehabilitation hospital inspired the idea to combine our device with a game engine” he says. “And allow potentially mini-games and stuff to be made for patients using the device trying to rehabilitate themselves.”

(Photo Credit: ASET)

Gauthier plans to continue working on and improving the T3 in his private time.