Incubator

Summary

Incubator is the part of NICU (Neonatal ICU). Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) is an intensive care unit specializing in the care of ill or pre-maturely born baby. Incubator provides a controlled, closed environment for the baby, in an attempt to establish some womb like conditions.

The primary requirements of the controlled environment are maintaining a temperature between 32 – 37 degree Celsius and relative humidity of around 70-90%. Some other requirements of the incubator are a regulated oxygen supply, maintaining proper noise levels, carbon dioxide levels monitoring, a proper air filtering system and so on.

Designing a control system that regulates temperature and humidity is the primary focus of the team. Two modes of temperature control have been recognized: Servo control ,that is, temperature variation depending on the baby’s skin temperature and the pre- set mode which regulates temperature depending on the temperature of the environment, with a tolerance of +/- 0.5 degree Celsius. Humidity level tolerance +/- 10%.

The model that is being built by the team is taking care of establishing temperature and humidity control , in the presence of a steady oxygen supply. Also the product being constructed is being made in such a manner that it complies with the ingernationally recognized standards for the incubator - IEC 60601-2-19 and 60601-2-20. Other additional features include the presence of an alarm system to draw attention in case of breakdown of system and a console for the user to input ideal temperature that has to be maintained.

Target Customers

The target customers of this product are those rural and town hospitals that cannot afford the expensive incubator imported into the country. Thus this product is aiming to do its bit in enhancing the medication and treatment facilities in the country by making affordable and efficient incubators.

Project Development

The incubator is required to maintain great accuracy in its control mechansism. Hence, a lot of effort has been directed in to reading up research papers and theses on the same and exploring avenues for improvement. Presently, the team is trying to build a model that maintains temperature and humidity levels as per the medical regulations for an incubator. A simulation model is being constructed, for analysis of stability of the control system under construction, for greater accuracy during building of the actual model. Parallely constructional features with a thermodynamic advantage for the model are being studied before the actual construction of the model.

Role of Sandbox

For testing of a basic controller circuit, various ICs available at Sandbox were used. Sensors that would act as a substitute for the sensors to be used in the model were used. Microcontroller like the Arduino Uno was used to generate a control signal. The 3-D printer was used to fashion a compartment for the circuit built. Various softwares like the Arduino IDE, ,MATLAB,SOLIDWORKS installed in the computers of the Sandbox were extensively used for the project. The PCB machine ,laser cutter are of great utility for project in the near future.

Electronic components that are not easily available were at our disposal for testing. The various facilities as ,mentioned above have made working very easy. The various tools in the mechanical workshop were also of great use and will remain to be. Also the ambience provided in the Sandbox really helped as it allowed fo rinteraction with other project members and consult them for software use aid and for some ideas.