Vent(it)lator robot
Breathing Life Into A Debilitated World
Dhriti Seth, AIS Gur 46, XII I
With 5.11 million people testing positive, the battle against COVID 19 has become fiercer than ever.
Today, scientists, epidemiologists, researchers, and doctors around the world are putting in the best possible efforts to battle this contagion.
With many innovations taking place everywhere, a young brother-duo, Vinayak and Kartik Tara, aged 8 and 12 years respectively, from Haryana’s Ambala district, in India, too decided to do their bit.
Their offering? A ground-breaking automated ventilator.
The making of a saviour
While India was battling the virus head-on, challenges were inevitable, and some of them rather conspicuous; one such being the shortage of ventilators.
The use of less efficient manual ventilators only added to the difficulty, something their innovation could easily overcome.
“Our model automates the process of hand pumping in a manual ventilator, minimizing human intervention, as is required today. When the ventilator is connected to a circuit, a balloon-like structure is compressed by a motor between two wooden walls that act as artificial hands, set at a particular speed and time. All this is connected with a mobile app to accurately monitor the patient’s health through it,” elaborates Kartik.
“Though still a prototype, it has been tested and proven successful in helping the medical staff,” added Vinayak.
The success story
Although the prototype is ready for the world, it was not without some challenges of its own.
“Due to the lockdown, we were unable to go out and shop the required equipments. Thanks to our dad, And our robotics teachers who made sure we got everything we needed at the right time,” says Vinayak.
“Since we convert the manual ventilators into automatic ones, we didn’t actually require much equipments. For the motor, we re-used the one used in a car’s window, and used Arduino for controlling, keeping the design as eco-friendly and budget-friendly as possible; pricing it at around 1560 INR,” further added Kartik.
To make their product more accessible, the duo is currently seeking government assistance to begin bulk-manufacturing.
The thought of it
“We were horrified looking at the devastating effect of COVID-19 on the entire world.
To proactively contain the spread of this contagion, we decided to help the government and health workers in this fight.
The prevalent shortage of ventilators came as a threat then, crippling India in this process and so, we acted out on them first,” says Kartik when quizzed about the inception of this innovation.
The fact both of them have been pursuing a course in robotics for over 4 years now played a significant role in bringing this concept to reality.
If the prototype gets a nod, it could play a significant role in improving India’s current predicament.
However, their quest to help their country does not just end here.
The duo is currently working on two more robot prototypes, both aimed at helping health workers.
While the robots are still in their nascent stages, the two boys have already reach an advanced stage of patriotism, one that begins with an honest desire to serve your country.
Dhriti Seth is a high school student and the Editor-in-Chief of her school newspaper — The Global Times. Deeply attached to the art of writing, she has been a part of the paper from past 5 years, penning down her thoughts and celebrating them along the way.
The World Teenage Reporting Project >COVID 19 is a global collaboration of teenage reporters in newsrooms around the world who produce stories about what their peers are doing to help during the Coronavirus pandemic.
