Medical Bed
This project was made in part with Connexall. Their European division was interested in developing and manufacturing a medical bed for geriatrics that would interface with their proprietary Connexall system that is used in 65% of top hospitals in the United States.
The Challenge:
To create a medical bed which could be used to easily transfer a geriatric patient from the bed to a stretcher, or another bed. And would also transform into a chair.
My Role:
In this project, there were two teams. I was specifically on the design team, and interfaced the moving parts of the project with the electrical and mechanical components. The electrical engineer did all of the powering for the actual product.
Process:
This project was the sum of all of my experience at Connexall. In this project, I worked with manufacturers, electrical engineers, and patent owners to come up with a design that was feasible for production. To start on this design, I did some research on what medical beds were already in the market. None of the medical beds in the market today do what this bed is supposed to do. With this, I got to work on a design that would be feasible to create. To note, this design was never actually completed, but I did learn a lot from the process. After I made the physical design, it was time to find someone who could manufacture the actual parts. This proved to be difficult. The Azores, Portugal was where I was working, so anything we wanted to manufacture had to be there. The cost of importing parts to the island would cost thousands of euros. To get around this, I used my Portuguese skills to discuss manufacturing with local manufacturers around the island. This proved to be difficult, as some processes were simply not possible on the island. I also had to work on the internals of the bed. Essentially this bed had to interface with the Connexall hospital system. I included stepper motors in the bed, which I tested using an Arduino and raspberry pi. I did design studies to determine the required torque for the motor to lift someone’s legs, and lift their upper body around two rotational axes.
Final Outcomes:
This design was my first professional design. Although the part was never really completed, I learned quite a bit about robotic design. I also learned a bit about manufacturing. This design really helped open my eyes to the possibilities in engineering, and what could be done for certain prices and budgets.