College of
ENGINEERING IN THE ASSISTIVE ROBOTICS LABORATORY in the Kopp Engineering Building on USF’s Tampa campus, Jillian Stover was surrounded by tools, prototypes and robotics projects. She held a small, four-wheeled robot that she had assembled and programmed herself. A Hillsborough Community College computer engineering technology student, Stover spent 80 hours in a lab of the USF Center for Assistive, Rehabilitation and Robotics Technologies (CARRT) as part of a collaboration with the Tampa-based nonprofit Hands On Education through which she learned the basics of coding and developing Android apps. The robot, and the certificate of completion she received during her graduation ceremony, were tangible representations of all her hard work. “It was great working at USF for my internship,” she says. “I did learn a lot through this program.” Developed in 1998, Hands On Education provides paid vocational training experiences to young adults with mild or moderate learning disabilities or physical disabilities. Program director John Ficca said Hands On Education currently has 15 of its students employed at partner organizations across Hillsborough County, including at parks and recreation facilities, animal control, fleet management and at USF. “We are so strong because of all our community partners coming together,” Ficca says. “What USF has done is given us a successful setting for employing (program students). We see that as an opportunity for developing skills and for self-discovery.” The program focuses on matching students’ abilities to potential employers, and program training manager Mike Cornelius says students who work at CARRT all have potential for working in tech. “The focus on participants at this lab is on those who are on top of their cognitive abilities and have high levels of aptitude,” Cornelius says. Redwan Alqasemi, CARRT lead researcher and mechanical engineering research professor, says that every student CARRT staff meets through the program is unique and that, as a center focused on assistive and rehabilitation technologies, these students’ time in the lab can offer valuable new perspectives. “I’ve often found that engineers need to get outside the box,” Alqasemi says. “We can make something that we think is great, but we don’t see the people who use the technology. That’s why this particular merger of machines and humans is unique.” This partnership also fits into CARRT’s existing vocational rehabilitation projects. CARRT director Rajiv Dubey says the center spent more than four years working on a virtual reality 32
UNIVERSITY of SOUTH FLORIDA
system built for vocational rehabilitation and tested it specifically for individuals with autism spectrum disorders. More than 25 publications and conference papers were written about the system — Virtual Reality for Vocational Rehabilitation — over the life of its corresponding research project. “(In this internship program), CARRT provides a close to real-world, flexible and friendly environment to learn various job skills,” Dubey says. “Such a setting with graduate students as mentors is best suited for individuals with autism spectrum disorders, as they need customized training.” Stover told her CARRT internship mentor Urvish Trivedi, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, about her ambitions to study cybersecurity after getting an associate degree. Trivedi tailored her curriculum for the semester appropriately. Toward the end of her internship, she was able to program a moving robot resembling a small remote-control car. Stover says if she has the chance to take a repeat internship with CARRT, she’d be interested in learning another coding language through the program. Stover recently started taking honors classes in her program and plans to transfer to USF once she finishes at HCC.
- RUSSELL NAY ’18 | College of Engineering
Stover stands with the programmable robot she assembled toward the end of her internship with CARRT.
Photos: Courtesy of the College of Engineering
Program teaches real-world job skills