Menifee Student Takes Home Gold at Engineering Fair

  Cade Pretorius, an eighth grade student at Santa Rosa Academy, received two awards at the RIMS Inland Science and Engineering Fair. Photo credit: Sam Pretorius 

By designing and building his own original project, an eighth grader from the Menifee area brought home two awards from the RIMS Inland Science and Engineering Fair, which took place April 6-7. The RIMS region includes Riverside, Inyo, Mono and San Bernardino Counties.

Cade Pretorius, a student from Santa Rosa Academy, received the Gold Medal Honor in the junior engineering category as well as the Jessica Richeri Engineering Award for his design and construction of a robotic arm that is controlled by his brain and facial expressions.

“It works by using a headset that reads the electrical signals in my brain and it picks up my thoughts,” said Cade. “I use those and my facial expressions as well, which are picked up by the headset [so I] can control the robotic arm.”

The idea for Cade’s project came from witnessing his grandmother, a quadriplegic, struggle with everyday tasks. If he could design a device that is controlled by thoughts, Cade said, he would be able to aid this dilemma.

“I wanted to create something that could help people like her and I thought it would be a great idea if I could use my mind to do something like that, control a robotic arm,” said Cade.

Cade worked for months in order to design and construct his project, which began as just some old toys. As he continued to work on the project, he bought more advanced headsets and robotic arms to use with the technology he had created.

“This year I wanted to improve on it and make it something that was reliable to use, and it is at that point,” said Cade.

He received the Jessica Richeri Engineering Award for designing a product that has a real, applicable purpose. He received the junior Gold Medal Honor for having the top project in the middle school age group.

“I really enjoyed being able to present my project, and the work I had done, to the judges there,” said Cade. “They were all approachable and they were all very knowledgable in their fields as well, and it was nice to be able to put the work I had done out there and get exposure.”

While Cade experienced much success at the event, his father Sam Pretorius is most proud of all of the effort that was put in prior to the science fair.

“Cade literally worked months on this, and the little bit of time that he spent at the fair was just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, in comparison to all the weekends that he gave up, some late nights he worked on it, and lots of problems that had to be solved,” said Pretorius. “The award at the end is just the cherry on top.”

As a result of receiving the Gold Medal Honor, Cade has moved on to the state science and engineering fair, which will take place in May. He will continue to work on his project in order to continue his success.

“I do plan on continuing with this project through using the same technology and improving on it to make it something even greater, and maybe not just continuing with the same thing, but applying the idea to other things as well, like controlling computer programs or whatever else,” said Cade.

If you would like to see the robotic arm in action, visit this site.