Nuclear Detective

A Logical Approach to Computer Security

Cool Alumni

Dean's Digest

Printer-friendly version

The Hands-Off Toilet team poses with its design, which won second place in the student design competition at the National Technical and Career Conference. Members are, from left, Alavaro Frausto, William Tovar, Eustaquio Carrillo, Jorge Carapia, and Herman Bravo. (Photo provided by HES)

Ladies, how many times have you gone to use the bathroom and the toilet seat is left in the unconscionable upright position by your boyfriend/brother/housemate/fill-in-the-blank? Gents, do you bristle every time you're asked/begged/nagged/fill-in-the-blank to put the toilet seat down? For years, this problem has left men and women flush with anger. No longer. A team of ME seniors (all men, most now alumni) promise peace with their new design called the Hands-Off Toilet, a bathroom system that automates the raising and lowering of the toilet seat and flushing process.

"We did it so the women would stop complaining," explains ME senior Eustaquio Alfonso Carrillo, chuckling.

The story began last fall when Carrillo, a member of Cal's Hispanic Engineers and Scientists (HES) club, wanted to enter the student design competition at the National Technical and Career Conference held in early January by the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. Carrillo knew he could find a competitive team. He approached friends who had worked together on a preliminary design of the bathroom system for ME 110. (Carrillo's friend, ME senior Herman Bravo, had a girlfriend, and it was from the personal experience of their relationship that the Hands-Off Toilet idea was born.) They agreed to form a team.

But taking a design from paper to competition-ready prototype in just one semester is another matter. First, according to the competition's rules, a design produced in a class must be further enhanced. So the team took surveys of fellow students who suggested adding automatic flushing. After hours and hours of calculations and the frustrating work of machining and testing two prototypes, the team came up with a two-pedal/lifting-bar and tension cord system. Step on the first pedal, the seat automatically raises. Step on the second pedal and it flushes the toilet and lowers the seat.

The team didn't have enough money to ship a real toilet to the competition so they built a plastic model. "When we got there, we discovered the box we had shipped it in was water damaged and the main tank had cracked," says Carrillo, laughing now. "Luckily, we were able to take it apart and salvage it. We used lots and lots of tape." The team worked until 6 a.m. on the day of the competition to get the system and model in working order. Then, instead of going to sleep, they practiced their presentation, which included a marketing plan and video designed by ME senior Alvaro Frausto which illustrated the system's exact functionality. When the team introduced its design, a female judge stood up and applauded them. "About time someone did that," she told the group.

At the closing banquet, the team found out it won second place. "Everyone was screaming with excitement," says Carrillo. "It was really fun."

Today, everyone except Carrillo has graduated and is out working, so there are no future plans for the design. But for the sake of personal relationships everywhere, Engineering News thinks an idea like this shouldn't disappear down the drain.

For more information about HES, go to www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~hes/.

Lab Notes is published online by the Marketing and Communications Office of the UC Berkeley College of Engineering. The Lab Notes mission is to illuminate groundbreaking research underway today at the College of Engineering that will dramatically change our lives tomorrow.

Media contact: Teresa Moore, Lab Notes editor, Director of Marketing and Communications
Writer, Researcher: David Pescovitz
Web Manager: Michele Foley

Subscribe or send comments to the Engineering Marketing and Communications Office: lab-notes@coe.berkeley.edu.

© 2006 UC Regents. Updated 6/1/06.