Projects spanned seven of the eight schools in the College of Engineering as well as students in computing, design, and liberal arts. Judges selected the top project from each discipline and a series of honorable mentions alongside a top interdisciplinary group Team RapidReach’s best overall project.

The surgical retractor was the work of a team of biomedical engineering students: John Cutrone, Dawei Liu, Michael Pavelchek, Poma, and Rohan Ravula. 

In the end the group settled on a ball-and-socket joint design with sliding pins that allows for easy one-handed adjustments mid-surgery. Testing with medical students and residents showed it was quick to learn how to use and reduced the time to shift the retractor from a minute or two to just a few seconds.

It would be useful for procedures such as thyroid gland removal, facial reconstruction, and plastic surgeries on the nose or face, for example.

“Our device reduces the number of operators that are needed, particularly in low resource settings. You just cannot have an additional person because that costs too much money,” Ravula said.

The best interdisciplinary project award went to an inexpensive design for a CubeSat orientation system called a reaction wheel. Created by a team of electrical, computer, and mechanical engineers, the design cost a fraction of the amount of traditional reaction wheel systems.

It’s specifically intended for a class of small satellites called CubeSats that have become a popular tool for quickly advancing space technology. Georgia Tech has launched a number of the briefcase-sized spacecraft, and they often use common components to keep costs down.

“Newer university satellites are moving to using consumer electronics, which are cheap,” said team member Daniel Vail, an electrical engineering major. “They’re the same sorts of components used in toys or other devices. But there’s no equivalent of that for a reaction wheel, because it’s something that would only ever be used on a satellite.”

A typical reaction wheel can run in the $10,000 to $15,000 range. Vail and his teammates — computer engineer Fahd Aly, mechanical engineer Emily Winters, and electrical engineers Taylor Frankum, Susannah Gordon, and James Shin — built one for about $1,000.

“It’s not the parts that make it expensive; it’s the fact that it’s produced for space,” Vail said. “When you can take maybe a 1% risk of this failing, then you can reduce the cost significantly.”

Elsewhere across McCamish, students displayed an assistive writing device to help people with chronic pain or conditions that affect grip strength and hand dexterity and a smarter cane to improve autonomy for visually impaired people.

There were robots to sort trash and recyclables and clean windows. One team created a comfortable cooling garment for outdoor workers that also can alert users to signs of heat stress. Two others designed blinds for high-rise building windows that capture energy and convert it to usable electricity for residents.

Lost car keys or TV remote? Students had a solution. Having trouble with your air conditioning? One device can diagnose the issue and estimate what it’ll cost to repair.

There was an automated tourniquet designed for military and law enforcement personnel that significantly reduced the time to control bleeding in life-threatening situations. And an anchoring system to allow wheelchair users to enjoy low-intensity theme park rides without having to move out of their chair.

Students explored more … unusual … ideas. Consider the group that created an artificial mucus akin to the human stuff. The idea was to help medical device companies have a realistic analog for testing potential products.

Teams also helped several hometown Atlanta companies — helping improve flavor innovation at Coca-Cola, engine work at Delta Airlines TechOps, and ticket sales and promotions for the Atlanta Braves.

Almost 60% of the teams at the spring Expo worked on projects for industry sponsors. The Capstone Design program also is supported by philanthropic donations that are part of Transforming Tomorrow: The Campaign for Georgia Tech, a more than $2 billion comprehensive campaign designed to secure resources that will advance the Institute and its impact — on people’s lives, on the way we work together to create innovative solutions, and on our world — for decades to come.

See all the winners from Capstone Expo below and visit expo.gatech.edu for more projects.