Final Deliverable
Project Summary
The motivation of this project is to create a working sterilization system that can be used for long-distance surgeries. The process is almost entirely automated, allowing for rural communities with less resources to perform more advanced surgical procedures. The preliminaries of this goal are met through the computing sub-team’s program and the modelling sub-team’s container.
​
The computing sub-team designed a computer program that can guide a robotic arm to identify containers of various colours and sizes and place them into the corresponding autoclave. The robotic motion is controlled by a muscle sensor emulator which is guided by human movements.
​
The modelling sub-team was required to design a container that was able to secure, transfer and facilitate the sterilization a surgical tool. The container had to contain surgical tool and the container's base had to fit inside of the autoclave and had to able to be picked up by the robotic arm (max width 80mm). The container had to allow for steam sterilization of the tool.
Robotic Arm (Q-Arm)
​
Design Solution
The computation sub-team created a program that can safely transport a container into its corresponding autoclave. When the container is placed in the pick-up location and the right arm muscle sensor emulator exceeds the threshold of 0.3, the robotic arm will move into position to pick up the container. The gripper is controlled by the left arm muscle emulator and will open and close when the threshold is zero or one, respectively. The program is provided information about the size and color of the container and will move the robotic arm to the correct autoclave if the threshold of 0.3 is met. The program will run until all containers are placed into their corresponding autoclaves and the program will terminate.
​
The modelling sub-team created a design that satisfies all the functions and constraints for the sterilization container. We created 3 different parts for this container, the base where the tool will be secured, the lid which provides a place for the robotic arm to grab a hold of it, and a screw which secured the lid to the base. We had to refine our design to meet the project requirements, like a g-code print time less than 2 hours, ensuring the dimensions were all greater than 4mm and the mass was less than 350g. For our final design we used the dimensions of the autoclave footprint and our given tool the tweezers to create our dimensions, we used the hypotenuse of the base to fit the tweezers. We used the normal force between the tweezers and the securers to secure the tool, as well as the lid and the screws for extra reinforcement. We also simplified the design and we used square holes on the top of the lid and on the bottom of the base to facilitate as much sterilization as possible. Lastly, our screws acted like a lock and key system where you could turn the screw 90 degrees and it will be stopped by a stopper and lock the lid in place.
Sterlization Container
