STEM II

STEM II is a class at Mass Academy taught by Dr. Crowthers. Beginning partway into C term, this class is where we complete an Assistive Technology Project. Working in groups of four to five, each group was tasked with finding a need in the community, and creating a device to solve said problem. Students applied and were given roles as either CEO, CTO, CIO, or CMO, and in addition to furthering their technical writing skills from STEM I, worked on these devices for about three months. We then presented these projects in mid May at the STEM II fair and were able to see all the amazing devices created by our peers.


SteadyDose: A Compact Device for Accessible and Precise Dispensing of Liquid Medicine Dosages


Developers: Shaina Premraj, Yerin Kim, Vikhaash Kanagavel Chithra, Vishal Balagani

Advisor: Kevin Crowthers (Massachusetts Academy of Math and Science)

Poster



Problem Statement

Liquid medication requires especially high precision as the dosages are often in small increments and pouring has to be done carefully into the small measurement cups. This is particularly challenging for people with difficulty in their fine motor skills, such as individuals with Parkinson's disease and trigger finger who have less control over careful movements with their hands. Furthermore, families with young children who need their liquid medication quickly may find manually pouring the liquid medicine to be inefficient, especially when there are multiple children who require different dosages. It is imperative that children receive the proper dose and not much more, if any, as their bodies are smaller and can react stronger to small fluctuations in medication. There are quite a few established products for efficient distribution of solid medication types in both manual and automatic forms. Although there are components of each system such as easy refills and easy triggering of the machine that would be helpful for user experience, they lack the ability to dispense liquid medication which is the main feature necessary for our product.



Design Concept One

Design concept 1 would consist of the UI System, a pumping mechanism, a temporary measurement and storage unit (TMSU), an activator system, and a dispensing system. Firstly, the pumping mechanism will transport the medicine from the user’s container to the temporary storage and measurement unit. The transportation will be done using a peristaltic pump. The peristaltic pump will intake medicine through a loose tube on the right which is submerged within the liquid in the user’s medicine container. On the left side, the pump will be attached to a tube which will be connected to a solenoid valve which will then lead into the TMSU. The presence of the solenoid valve here will ensure there is no overflow of medicine into the TMSU and allow us to control the flow of the liquid with precise accuracy. The TMSU will be responsible for the measurement of the user-inputted dosage. The TMSU consists of a 40 mL plastic beaker with a tube attached to the bottom of the beaker which is connected to a solenoid valve. The other side of the solenoid valve will be attached to a loose tube where the medicine is finally dispensed back to the user. The measurement of the liquid will be done using capacitive touch sensors. 4 touch sensors will be placed on the inside of the beaker at spots that correspond with the desired dosage sizes. The dosage sizes chosen were to be 5, 10, 15, and 20 mL because these are the most common and standard dosage sizes. The user would input the desired dosage size via 4 buttons placed on the outside of the TMSU, the device would then dispense liquid until the corresponding touch sensor is triggered. Then, the solenoids would trigger to stop the flow of liquid and then dispense the liquid within the TMSU.








Design Concept Two

Design concept 2 would consist of a pumping mechanism and an Arduino Microcontroller. This design concept incorporates the pumping mechanism proposed for Design Concept #1. The microcontroller would control the time the motor was turned on. Thereby, being able to dispense the user-specific volume by employing the mathematical relation between the flow rate of a pump and the time the pump has been turned on.








Design Concept Three

Design concept 3 would consist of a pumping mechanism, an internal storage container, a linear actuator system with electrodes for volume measurement, and a dispense control system. This design concept incorporates the pumping mechanism proposed for Design Concept #1. The linear actuator system sets itself at a certain height such that the amount of liquid medicine that fills up the container until it makes contact with the base of the linear actuator system is equal to the user-specified dosage. When the liquid medicine makes said contact, it would complete an open circuit caused by 2 oppositely charged electrodes placed at the base of the linear actuator system. When the circuit of the 2 electrodes is active, the device turns off the intake of medicine through the pump and dispenses all the medicine inside the container back to the user.








Prototype

Build

Schematic

Our final prototype was built off of the third design concept, however it had some changes made to it. Users are able to enter their desired dosage amount, then the linear actuator adjusts in the TMSU(temporary measurement storage unit) to the height of that dosage amount. From there, the Arduino triggers the peristaltic motor which flows water into the container until the sensors at the bottom of the linear actuator are triggered and the flow stops. The liquid is then poured out into a cup below, and users are able to use it at their disposal.


Presentation