Edge Hill creating the Interactive Teddy Bear

Edge Hill will turn Year 10 Pupil Chloe’s Interactive Teddy Bear for Children with Autism into a reality with their prototype as part of a continued partnership between Edge Hill and Primary Engineer.

Edge Hill are one of our Partners for Liverpool, Merseyside and Cheshire as part of our annual engineering competition which asks pupils aged 3-19 ‘If you were an engineer what would you do?’ and encourages pupils come up with creative solutions to real-world problems.

Edge Hill have selected this design to turn into a prototype over the 2023/2024 academic year which will be unveiled at the next Liverpool, Merseyside and Cheshire Awards Ceremony and Public Exhibition during the Summer term.

They chose this design because it could really help children with autism.

Beginning the prototype

The teddy bear prototype design was selected by a group of three students as it provided the opportunity to combine practical electronics development with an application that could be used for engaging with children with autism. Two of the students are studying degree programmes at Edge Hill University in Electrical Engineering and Industrial Automation and Robotics, respectively. The third member of the team was on international placement from Mexico, studying a degree in Biomedical Engineering at Monterrey, Mexico. The project thus provided the opportunity to do some multidisciplinary project work that was relevant to their respective degree programmes.

The initial work was performed over 12-weeks in Semester 1 as part of the Level 5 Professional Practice in Engineering module, which resulted in the design, implementation and testing of basic level functionality. The developed prototype is planned to be enhanced and refined over Semester 2 and the summer months.