Spring 2005

Seattle University Students Create Accessible Software for Blind Machinists

The Project Team included Seattle University students and Seattle Lighthouse staff. (Pictured starting at front right working clockwise): Norm Slader, Quyen Le, Ken Wolford, Diana Bonilla, Rionald Soerjanto, Ward Silver, Doug Case, Shriram Reddy, and Don Swaney. Photo courtesy of Seattle University.

Last year, the Seattle Lighthouse for the Blind partnered with Seattle University (SU) to create a sophisticated, completely accessible software program for one of the Lighthouse machines used in making airplane parts. Four SU engineering students spent their senior year creating an interface program for the M-6 milling machine, allowing blind machinists to create quality parts safely and efficiently. “It’s updating equipment designed in World War II to the 21st century,” says Ken Wolford, machine engineer specialist. “It’s like the difference between walking and flying.”

“This was a great opportunity for students to do a significant upgrade,” explains Ward Silver, SU’s electrical engineering senior design advisor. “The technology had a neat feature: the interface was going to be for a visually impaired user. So the challenge there is that you’ll have to consider this from a visually impaired person’s viewpoint. You’ll live in an audio world. That’s going to change your perspective. It takes pre-conceived notions and throws them out the window. You can’t rely on visual cues.”

Lighthouse engineering staff purchased the M-6 machine to make tapered metal shims for Boeing airplanes. “We wanted to make it accessible for operators who are blind,” says Norm Slader, director of engineering. “We budgeted for outside software support to help us build features to make it easier for blind operators to run the machine.”

“It replaces older, manual-type machines,” adds Ken. “It took the operator up to an hour to set up and adjust. The new machine is a computer numerically controlled system that takes only minutes to set up.”

“What the SU students did was they came and created what’s called a GUI form. GUI stands for graphical user interface,” he continues. “A blind operator puts in the data from the work order. Every time the operator puts in the data, the software checks that it is within range to make sure the operator didn’t put in incorrect data. It takes the information then inserts it into a parametric part program.”

“This project is typical of how things evolve in that a process or system is working reasonably well; but we’re going to do it better, faster, and cheaper,” says Ward. “[We were able to use] a leading-edge program to give a controller a whole new architecture and opportunity to provide a whole new set of capacities.”

“We were assigned the project based on our skills,” recalls Shriram Reddy, who was both student team leader and team programmer for the project. “We had a combination of students with hardware and software experience.”

“We had two strong software types and two strong non-software types interested in building and testing. Half went to work building a test bed and test simulator, half started coding,” Ward says. “We tested and tested and tested.” By their last quarter, the students successfully integrated the GUI with the machine creating an accessible, up-to-date interface.

“The whole concept of the machine was built around quality control and safety issues,” Ken asserts. “The goal was to totally automate it and make it more accessible.”

“With SU being Jesuit, we wanted to give back to the community,” says Sheridan Botts, contracts manager for the university’s Science and Engineering Project Center. “Every year we choose community benefit projects. This one was pretty fun.”

Ward describes the project as a “win-win” situation: “It’s a very real-world experience for the students. Seattle Lighthouse for the Blind was very happy with the results of the project.” Sheridan adds that the students have “learned how to apply their experience, they’ve learned to solve real-life problems. You really care what happens. It’s a significant motivator for the students.”

Shriram agrees. “Many students graduate without a lot of real-world experience. Having this project really helped in getting a full-time position.” Shriram currently works as an embedded software engineer for The Boeing Company. He concludes, “It was a great experience to work with someone not financially motivated. We created something that [the Seattle Lighthouse] will use and that will help a lot of people.”

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