How This Emergency Ventilator Could Keep Covid-19 Patients Alive

[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]