The Praxis Ideation Challenge is a six-month competition split into three stages. First, a submission stage with a video pitch, then the selected pitches were invited to a live Pitch Competition, and lastly, the selected projects will be invited to participate in the Prototype Demo Day.
CBB has been a very fortunate partner to learn about all the contestants, and in the process, getting to know what drives each team in their passion to develop their innovate ideas. In particular, two teams have made it as finalists and will be presenting on the Prototype Demo Day July 29th, 2021.
These University of Waterloo students have been hard at work developing their ideas, and we would like to take this opportunity to highlight their achievements and share with you, their stories. CBB had the honour to speak to two individuals and learn more about their projects.
One team, with members Danniel Hu & Orianna Min, created Project PHANES, which is “an exercising and walking support exo-skeleton for people living with paraplegia spinal cord injury." The name of their project comes from the God of creation from Greek mythology. As quoted by Danniel Hu, he “hope[s] to bring light to people living with SCI with this exo-skeleton project."
Team members Rachel Janhunen, Caitlin O’Callaghan, Kira Wadden, and Jessica Doe, all worked together to create Accessible Virtual Reality. They were “looking to enable the independent use of virtual reality (VR) by tetraplegics with little to no movement below the neck." This would unlock the power of distraction therapy for tetraplegics by making virtual reality accessible.
We are looking forward to seeing more from the two teams during the Prototype Demo Day on July 29, 2021.