New machine to aid disabled workers
Project from Ualbany students stemmed from Center for Disability Services request
ALBANY — A team of University at Albany students is building a machine to assist disabled workers at a Colonie mail fulfillment facility in separating mail from sheets that divide them.
The machine, in development by engineering classmates Jacob Bruno, Jordan Jung and Shakur Williams, would detect whether paper passing through it is mail or a separator. The project emerged from a request by the Center for Disability Services, an Albany-based nonprofit operating the fulfillment center at 63 Karner Road, seeking a system to help physically and intellectually disabled workers accurately separate the envelopes instead of doing it manually.
According to a 2023 report by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, 39 percent of New York residents with a disability were part of the workforce in 2019, compared to 81 percent of those without disabilities. Alexander Demitraszek from the Center for Disability Services, which employs about 68 workers at the mail fulfillment center, said that implementing a new system could lead to the hiring of workers with a broader range of disabilities.
“We have some individuals who may have an intellectual disability but also are physically limited, they might not have the dexterity to flip through pages to be able to find that separator page,” Demitraszek said. “They’ll be able to collate the envelopes themselves whereas before they had to rely on an individual who was able to do that for them.”
The engineering students aim to complete the project by next week, preparing for a statewide competition on April 8 focused on creating workplace solutions for disabled people. They will also showcase their prototype to the Center for Disability Services, hoping for its adoption by the nonprofit. In recent years, University at Albany students have developed systems to assist disabled workers in clearing shredded paper
from an industrial shredder, as well as automatically opening packages containing reams of paper. Both are used by workers at the Colonie fulfillment
center, Demitraszek said.
In a classroom at the University at Albany’s Emerging Technology and Entrepreneurship Complex (ETEC), Bruno, Jung and Williams could be seen on a recent afternoon working on their mail sorting machine, surrounded by classmates focused
on other projects. Their machine, box-shaped and equipped with wheel motors, will be attached to a slide part where mail and separators pass through one at a time. A camera scans the passing mail and the machine stops upon detecting a separator sheet. Williams, a Jamaican track athlete at Ualbany, uploaded code from a laptop to a credit card-sized device controlling the machine’s motors. Meanwhile, Jung, a South Korea native from Pennsylvania, printed a part she designed on a 3D printer from another laptop.
In interviews, Williams expressed hope for other engineering students to contribute to the project if it isn’t adopted, while Jung said she enjoyed learning new 3D modeling and printing skills.
“It was a lot of fun coming up with designs also and keep editing them,” Jung said.