Engineering a Mountain Rescue Litter
Students build small-sized prototypes of mountain rescue litters—rescue baskets for use in hard-to-get-to places, such as mountainous terrain—to evacuate an injured person (modeled by a potato) from the backcountry. Groups design their litters within constraints: they must be stable, lightweight, low-cost, portable and quick to assemble. Students demonstrate their designs in a timed test during which they assemble the litter and transport the rescued person (potato) over a set distance.
Rescuers evacuate a victim from the backcountry.Copyright 2011 Alan English (creative commons limited license) https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanenglish/6308136816/in/photostream/
Biomedical engineers design solutions for medical and health-related challenges. Students practice being biomedical engineers as they design and build small-sized rescue litter prototypes. In addition, students practice the essential engineering skill of designing within constraints, which are specified for this challenge as device weight, cost, stability, portability and ease of assembly.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Explain the purpose of a rescue litter.
- Describe that the purpose of a rescue litter's stability is to avoid spinal cord injury, which could result in victim paralysis.
- Apply the engineering design process to design engineering solutions within specified constraints.