HIGH POINT — Erin Morrow has every right to complain about her grueling class schedule at High Point University this semester, except for one little thing — it’s exactly the way she wants it to be.
The 21-year-old junior, a middle grades math education major from Windham, New Hampshire, crams all of her classes into two days — Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 9:45 a.m. to 7:05 p.m. — leaving the rest of the week wide open for her business interests.
“I don’t have a lot of down time,” Morrow admits, “but I consider (my work interests) fun, so it doesn’t bother me at all.”
Morrow and Jacob Parker, an acquaintance she knows from high school, are the business partners behind the Finger Flyer, a unique quadcopter drone that can be controlled simply by gesturing. Parker invented the device as a toy, and Morrow enhanced its use by developing a kit for promoting the Finger Flyer to schools.
“We have our commercial market for individual customers who want the Finger Flyer as a fun toy, but the education market is our biggest market,” Morrow says. “We sell them in bulk to schools across the country. That’s my strong suit. The Finger Flyer was a toy, and I helped figure out how to mold it as an educational tool.”
Morrow, who has a love for STEM education — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — says the small drones can be used to teach students not only about flight technology, but also about fundamental STEM principles such as physics and aerodynamics.
“They’re doing very well, and we’re getting some great and helpful feedback,” she says. “One of our favorite things is seeing photos of kids playing with the Finger Flyer in their classrooms.”
What makes the Finger Flyer unique is its patented flight technology, which allows the drones to be controlled using onboard gesture sensors and a finger-port board — “much like a Hoverboard for the hands,” the product’s website states — thus eliminating the need for a traditional remote control. In addition to hovering, the Finger Flyer can perform tricks, flips, spins and more.
With the success of the Finger Flyer, Morrow and Parker are now expanding into robotics and have developed a gesture-controlled robot arm.
“Our proprietary technology enables robot arms to be controlled using automated commands and a matrix of wearable sensors,” the company’s promotional material explains. “The included operator sleeve monitors the coordinates of the wearer’s arm, hand and fingers, which are sent to the robot arm to emulate the motion.”
The product, which is not yet publicly available, will be sold under the name Rossum Robots.
Morrow, who won some of her startup funding through two different business competitions at HPU, says she’ll devote her full time to Finger Flyers and Rossum Robots after she graduates next year.
“I want to fully focus on that and see what happens,” she says. “I don’t want to look back 10 years from now and regret not giving it a shot.”
Commented
Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles.