Timeline
March 2022
Team Formation
After passing through the extensive Gemstone team selection process, consisting of two rounds of voting by the 2025 Gemstone cohort, Team SCOOT was established by 10 undergraduate students. The image to the left comes from the video created by Jake Muller and Zuzanna Szylow that was used to gain interest in the topic and ultimately recruited the most efficient team to carry out the research.
May 2022
Team Mentor
Our team mentor, Dr. Derek A. Paley, was appointed following consultation with Gemstone staff. Paley is the Director of the Maryland Robotics Center and Willis H. Young Jr. Professor of Aerospace Engineering Education in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and the Institute for Systems Research at the University of Maryland. Paley has played a crucial role in our research process by providing insightful feedback, valuable resources, and helpful advice.
August 2022
I-Corps Process and Value Proposition
In the summer of 2022, a few of our members participated in the I-Corps course which gave us the skills to conduct valuable stakeholder interviews in order to refine our value proposition. The I-Corps Customer Discovery process includes interviewing potential customers to understand their problems within the market which allowed our team to pinpoint where the gap in research lies. Ultimately, our team collectively has conducted 92 interviews and as a result, our refined value proposition is to design and prototype an ergonomic and modular knee scooter with a novel kick-assist technology to improve ride ability for more users.
