Please join us for these presentations on Friday, December 17th, from 3:20 – 5:20 pm in the Martin C. Jischke Hall of Biomedical Engineering, Room 1001. Immediately following the presentations, the teams will host product demonstrations in the atrium and in the Leslie A. Geddes’ Senior Design Laboratory (Room 1087).  Please RSVP to kcooper@purdue.edu.

This semester's projects include:

• A cost effective preterm infant incubator.  Preterm birth accounts for more than 500,000 infant deaths per year in developing countries. Of those deaths more than half of them occur due to the inability to provide an optimal environment when transporting them from a rural home to medical facilities. For this reason, team Porta-Baby has developed a low cost portable incubator to transport infants from rural environments to a hospital. The Porta-Baby device provides a heated and humidified environment by circulating air through an insulated enclosure. The unique satchel design of the device allows for the infant to be positioned close to the transporter’s chest to permit breast feeding during transport, and utilization of the transporter’s body heat. Employment of a user’s body heat greatly reduces the power requirements of the system to allow for the system to be powered by a hand crank.

• Smart helmet for military soldiers.  United States military soldiers working in extreme environments are often unable to detect predictive symptoms of shock and heat stroke.   A team of biomedical and electrical engineering students at Purdue University has developed a military helmet to monitor and respond  to changes in environmental noise, and the user’s  heart rate and body temperature.  Heart rate and body temperature are monitored through sensors incorporated into the padding of a military helmet.   These sensors provide feedback to the wearer when their physiological signals are indicating that shock or heat stroke is eminent.  To combat heat stroke the helmet is designed with a detachable cooling device.   This device also includes an environmental sound control to both enhance and protect the hearing of the user.   This device is a novel approach to soldier safety, combining diagnostics, preliminary treatment, and sensory enhancement into a “smart helmet.”

• Bioelectrically controlled car.  One of the primary challenges faced by people with impaired limb function, such as amputees, is the challenge of finding employment in a society in which most job functions require the use of their arms. It is not surprising that amputees have a significantly higher unemployment rate (15.6%) compared to people with no disability (9.3%). The Bio-RC system was developed to enhance employment opportunities for upper arm amputees and ultimately their quality of life.  Bio-RC is a system that remotely controls a motorized vehicle using only facial movements.   Steering, throttle, and braking controls of the systems is controlled through surface electrodes placed above, below, and on both sides of the eyes and on the jaw. This system has been initially developed using a Go-Kart as the vehicle model but can be readily adapted to any commonly-used motorized equipment. By enabling people with impaired limb function to operate motorized equipment using this system, a wide array of employment opportunities become available to them for the first time, such as jobs which require the use of industrial equipment such as forklifts, combines, or tractors.

• User controlled hearing aid.  While hearing aids improve hearing, even the advanced digital hearing aids have limited speech intelligibility and provide little control over specific sounds to be amplified. Our team has designed a device to give users the ability to focus on a sound source in order to minimize the need for the user to split their concentration between distinguishing sounds and conversation content. The device consists of a filter bank, a classifier, a bioelectrically controlled directional amplifier, and a noise reducer.  Our filter bank is modeled after how the human ear interprets sound by decomposing the input signal into different frequency bins.  The classifier monitors the environmental noise level to determine the level of sound amplification, while the noise reducer minimizes unwanted sounds. The direction amplifier allows the user to select the direction to amplify through movement of the eye.   This device is unique from commercially available hearing aids in that it offers individuals the choice of which sounds to amplify.

• Tactile surface detector.  While myoelectrically controlled prosthetic devices have enriched the lives of amputees, these devices are still unable to provide the amputee with a sense of awareness of the artificial limb, and as a result, require the user to rely on visual feedback for limb function. Constant employment of visual feedback to use artificial limbs is disruptive to the user and limits the speed at which they are able to use their prosthetic.  Therefore, Team “???”, has designed a tactile surface detector and sensory feedback device that removes the need of visual feedback in a myoeletrically controlled prosthetic.  The “???” device is capable of detecting and providing sensory feedback on grasping force, surface roughness, and prosthetic finger movement.  Sensory feedback is relayed to the user through a series of compression bands and a vibro-tactile system secured around the upper arm of the user.  This project is in collaboration with the Center for Implantable Devices (CID) at Purdue University. The tactile sensing device will be attached to a CID designed prosthetic hand which has been modified to accommodate the tactile sensing device. 

• Intraoral communication device.  Currently, long distance communication between people has been constrained to openly audible noise via a peripheral communication device, e.g. microphones and headsets.  While this mode of communication is generally acceptable, some communication by the military, security/intelligence agencies, and law enforcement needs to be covert.  This team has developed an intraoral communication device that consists of a transmitter implanted into a tooth that sends sound to the cochlea via bone conduction pathways in the jaw bone and skull, an inductively charged power supply, a RF wireless signal transmission system, and an implantable piezoelectric transducer.

• Conductive heat therapy device to treat benign prostatic hypertrophy.  Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) affects approximately half of the men between the ages of 50 and 60, and the incidence rate increases to 80% in men above the age of 80.  Current minimally invasive procedures, such as transurethral resection of the prostate and transurethral microwave therapy, can lead to urinary incontinence and impotence due to the damage of surrounding sphincter muscles.  The BPH Burners team has developed a device that monitors temperatures within the prostate tissue and implements a control algorithm to target necrosis of tissue blocking the urethra while minimizing the risk of damaging the sphincter.  The device delivers heat via a resistive heating element located within a urinary catheter, and monitors temperature conditions within the tissue using thermistors.  The computer controlled system conducts real-time analysis of the thermal conditions, and automatically controls the power output to the heating element, effectively decreasing the risk of sphincter damage.  To prove the efficacy of the design relating to tissue necrosis, a miniature device has been created and tested within a rat model.  This conductive heat design and control algorithm minimizes the risk of post-operative complications and leads to better outcomes for the patient. 

• Gamer Opportunities for upper extremity amputees.  In the United States alone, there are over 375,000 upper limb amputees.  Transradial amputees are unable to perform common tasks, such as typing on a computer, due to technological barriers.  To combat some of the barriers, this team’s innovative design solution uses electrodes to detect muscle contractions produced by the individual to actuate prosthetic fingers that can interface with a computer keyboard.  The computer game Tetris will be used to test the reaction time and functionality of the device.