Engineering students build treadmill that helps athletes in wheelchairs work out

The eight-time national champion UTA Movin Mavs might be getting even better soon, thanks to some ingenuity among mechanical engineering students. A University of Texas at Arlington senior design project team built a treadmill that can be used by athletes in wheelchairs.
Brandon Griffin, team leader on the project and a mechanical engineering student, said the idea of a wheelchair treadmill had circulated among various senior design project teams for a number of years. There were about 12 to 14 projects that advisers put up on the board and that's the one that appealed to us, said Griffin, who is a former sergeant in a U.S. Army tank unit. Previous teams tried, but failed for different reasons. We came up with something that worked.