- [Narrator] This may not look like an important piece
of medical equipment but it could be one
of the critical things keeping COVID-19 patients alive.
It's an emergency ventilator
[ventilator whooshes] designed by a team from MIT
that is trying to use common equipment, both medical--
- We want to use one of these Ambu bag things
[bag whooshes]
to ventilate people.
- [Narrator] And automotive.
- Windshield wiper motors are one of the most
engineered things on the planet.
- [Narrator] FDA approved ventilators
are sophisticated machines that cost roughly $30,000
and require hundreds of components.
The MIT team took that as a challenge.
Design a low-cost ventilator that can be built
anywhere there's need.
They put their research [words click]
on a open-source website so that groups around the world
adapt it to what they had locally and give feedback.
We spoke with research scientist Nevan Hanumara
and professors Alex Slocum and Daniela Rus.
- The idea that we could attach a robotic device
that is easy to manufacture low-cost, robust,
and gentle to the bag is what guided our work.
- [Narrator] The design can be broken up
into three main parts: the breathing circuit,
the mechanical ventilator, and the controls.
The breathing circuit is made up of supplies
that hospitals already have on hand.
- We refer to it as the manual resuscitator bag,
the breathing circuit, and the endotracheal tube.
- [Narrator] The heart of the design is the Ambu bag,
a very common piece of equipment in hospitals.
It's a manual respirator usually squeezed
by trained medical personnel to push air into the lungs
of patients temporarily.
- You can't have one responder per patient squeezing
poochy, poochy, poochy, poo,
one of these Ambu bag things
[bag whooshes]
to ventilate people.
So we need a little box to do that automatically.
- [Narrator] Ambu bags are common life-saving equipment
but they aren't designed for long-term use.
Keeping the bag from wearing out too quickly
was the first challenge.
The team needed to be able to use them for weeks,
just like the electrically powered ventilators
usually used by hospitals.
- The general theme is be nice to your bag
because this thing that's normally meant
to just be scooched for an hour has to do
[bag squeaks]
for two weeks, you don't wanna break it.
- [Narrator] To do that they had to build a pair of gentle,
yet robust, robotic hands.
- That curved shape of the hands, or the paddles,
that gives us that nice gentle rolling
to keep the center of the bag happy.
Originally, the idea was to have a design
that could be created in makerspaces around the world
but they soon discovered the machines would need
far more industrial materials if they were going to keep
COVID-19 patients breathing.
Their first prototype used laser-cut plastic for the hands.
That plastic is fine for hobby projects
but it quickly failed when tested.
- This makerspace laser-cut plastic is no good.
Yo need to design this thing
so you could kick it across the room.
- [Narrator] The solution?
They reinforce the hands with metal.
Strengthening the robotic hands was an easy design fix.
Now, there was a new problem.
The increased load on the machine's gears and motors.
Their first design relies on a single motor
turning two gears.
- The gears engage each other so if you move one hand,
the other hand will be forced to go with it.
And it works great.
It's a fine thing but the gears are highly stressed
when you get to these big loads of the COVID patients.
- [Narrator] To fix this problem,
the team is exploring a new idea,
using two motors to control the two hands separately.
They found a possible solution in an unlikely place,
the front of nearly every car on earth.
- We're using windshield wiper motor,
one of the most engineered things on the planet.
I mean, they're designed to go--
Well, you know what they do,
you can beat the tar out of them.
It's easier in places around the world
to grab two wiper motors,
'cause the ones we're using are nearly ubiquitous,
then to require relatively good manufacturing
to get the gear design to work.
- [Narrator] However, as the designs continue to evolve,
the control aspect of the machine
becomes more and more important.
- If you have two motors, now the software has to ensure
that the two motors are well synchronized
because otherwise if one arm pushes and the other one
forgets to come in to help,
you don't really have a working system.
- [Narrator] After consulting with doctors,
a few necessary requirements became clear.
One of the reasons ventilators work is because
they give healthcare workers fine control
over the volume of air pushed into the lungs,
how many breaths per minute,
and the ratio of inhale to exhale.
So the team built a control board
that works like a retro stereo with big, turnable knobs.
- Even though in a very simple design,
what's the minimum information we need
so that someone who's respiratory trained
can make the necessary adjustments.
- [Narrator] They also had to include critical alarms
that would go off if the pressure in the lungs
was too much or too little.
- The doctor doesn't care about the guts of the machine.
The doctor just wants to adjust the knob and then [gasps].
So that's where you have this balance
between mechanical complexity and control complexity.
- [Narrator] Recently, the team consulted with 10XBeta
in New York to create 3,000 ventilators
called the Spiro Wave
and many teams around the world
are building similar prototypes.
As COVID-19 spreads, the team wants to make sure
that this design can be used in local supply chains,
especially where it might be difficult
to access normal ventilators.
The website provides an interface for people
to leave feedback and learn about what could work
for their own markets.
- As many different mechanisms you can envision,
as people are and will,
the things that are the same will be the forces,
the alarms that are needed, these functional requirements
and then now, it's up to the creative people,
which they're all over the place,
and then they can apply it to what they do have
for local production.
[calm instrumental music]