Published: August 22, 2026
Engineering has always been about solving complex problems, but the most profound solutions often arise at the intersection of technical innovation and human empathy. According to statistics from the World Health Organization, more than one billion people worldwide—approximately 16 percent of the global population—live with some form of disability, many of which severely impact independent movement. At the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in Phoenix, the IEEE Foundation celebrated three high school students who are actively working to change those statistics. Designing sophisticated, accessible assistive devices, these young innovators took home this year's IEEE Presidents' Scholarship awards.
Presented by IEEE President Mary Ellen Randall, the awards recognize students who demonstrate an exceptional grasp of electrical engineering, computer science, and robotics. This year's projects highlighted how consumer-grade electronics, advanced mathematics, and creative mechanical design can be leveraged to create low-cost, high-impact assistive technologies.
---1. Tonguage: A Computer-Vision Human-Machine Interface
Taking the top prize and a $10,000 scholarship was Hollie Tang, a sophomore at Wilson High School in California. Tang designed Tonguage, a noninvasive, computer-vision-based human-machine interface (HMI) designed to restore autonomy to individuals with severe mobility impairments.
Unlike traditional HMIs that require costly, specialized eye-tracking hardware or invasive neural implants, Tonguage operates entirely via standard, budget-friendly laptop cameras. The system utilizes facial-landmark tracking algorithms to map movements of the user's face, eyes, and tongue. Inside the interface, the tongue acts as a highly sensitive directional joystick to control a mouse cursor or navigate a power wheelchair, while simple eye blinks are mapped to emulate mouse clicks.
Tang's design addresses a critical engineering challenge: safety in unpredictable, real-world environments. In public settings, a standard camera feed can easily be disrupted by bystanders moving in the background. To counter this, Tang implemented a robust, facial-recognition-based user lock. The algorithm identifies and isolates the primary user's face, actively ignoring any secondary visual inputs that enter the frame. This ensures that a bystander walking behind a wheelchair user won't trigger an accidental movement command.
While Tang initially conceived the system as a simple mouse and keyboard replacement, she quickly realized its broader applications. Beyond wheelchair navigation and robotic arm control, she envisions Tonguage being used for gaming. For Tang, true accessibility means giving people the freedom to enjoy entertainment and play, alongside completing daily functional tasks. She hopes to pursue a career in biomedical engineering, emphasizing that empathy is just as vital as code when designing technology for human welfare.
---2. NeuroGait: The Low-Cost, Mind-Controlled Exoskeleton
Securing second place and a $600 scholarship was Partap Sidhu, a junior at Bethpage High School in New York. Sidhu developed NeuroGait, a mind-controlled lower-limb exoskeleton engineered to assist individuals struggling with mobility limitations, such as navigating staircases.
NeuroGait's primary technical breakthrough is how it processes neural intent. The system tracks the Bereitschaftspotential (BP), or readiness potential—a subtle electrical signal generated in the motor cortex roughly one to two seconds before a person consciously initiates a physical movement. To capture this signal, Sidhu designed a custom electroencephalogram (EEG) headset. The raw neural telemetry is processed using a custom-trained Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) that classifies the user's movement intentions with a remarkable 99.9% accuracy. The entire loop, from neural firing to physical actuation, maintains an overall system accuracy of 95.2% over hundreds of testing trials.
On the mechanical side, Sidhu bypassed the heavy, rigid, and power-hungry DC motors commonly found in commercial exoskeletons. Instead, he turned to biomimetic design, utilizing Pneumatic Artificial Muscles (PAMs). These flexible actuators mimic the contraction and relaxation of biological muscles. Because PAMs are naturally compliant, they safely yield to the physical limitations of the human body, preventing the joint injuries that can occur with rigid mechanical over-travel.
Perhaps most impressively, Sidhu built the entire prototype for approximately $276. For context, commercial gait-rehabilitation exoskeletons regularly retail between $40,000 and $100,000. By sharing his development logs and keeping costs low, Sidhu hopes to make neuro-rehabilitation tools accessible to community centers and clinics that cannot afford commercial-grade systems.
---3. Math Into Motion: A Robotic Hexapod for Disaster Response
Third-place winner Calvin Shang Hung, a sophomore at El Cerrito High School in California, took a mathematical approach to mobility. Awarded a $400 scholarship, Hung developed Math Into Motion, a six-legged walking robot (hexapod) designed to cross highly unstable terrain where wheeled rovers and humans cannot safely tread.
Hung was inspired by the structural stability of insects and the limitations of traditional wheeled planetary rovers. When devastating earthquakes struck Türkiye and Syria in 2023, he pivoted the project's focus toward search-and-rescue and disaster relief. The hexapod utilizes a highly stable tripod gait, ensuring that three of its feet remain securely planted on the ground at all times while the other three sweep forward to take a step.
To coordinate the movement of eighteen individual joints across six legs, Hung had to master advanced robotic mathematics from scratch. The control system relies on three distinct pillars:
- Inverse Kinematics (IK): Translates a desired coordinate in 3D space (where the foot needs to go) into the precise angular rotations required by the individual leg motors.
- Linear Interpolation: Divides the movement paths into miniature increments to ensure smooth, continuous, and jerk-free leg transitions.
- Euclidean Transformations: Corrects the directional vectors of each leg relative to the robot's overall orientation, ensuring the robot moves in the intended direction regardless of which way its body is rotated.
Hung's journey highlights the classic maker experience. With no prior electrical engineering background, he taught himself schematic capture, PCB design, 3D modeling, and hand-soldering. After a catastrophic board failure on his third prototype nearly derailed his timeline, Hung simplified his routing, redesigned the PCB, and successfully built a fourth version that walked flawlessly across his living room floor. His advice to fellow DIY electronics makers is simple: find a project you are passionate about, and the challenging trials of development will feel like play.
---The Future of Assistive Embedded Systems
These three projects demonstrate that modern embedded systems, computer vision, and robotics are no longer locked behind the gates of well-funded industrial labs. By utilizing affordable microcontrollers, custom PCBs, open-source machine learning libraries, and creative mechanical design, these high school innovators have developed systems that rival the core functionality of commercial medical devices at a fraction of the cost.
For the EDATA SL community of developers, makers, and embedded engineers, these projects serve as a powerful reminder: the tools we use every day—from microcontrollers and custom PCBs to simple webcams and mathematical algorithms—can be harnessed to solve some of the most critical challenges in human mobility. True innovation lies in combining technical curiosity with a desire to make the world a more accessible place.
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Original news rewritten with AI for educational purposes.
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