Mechatronics Learning Studio
Pill Dispenser
Jacques
Leclerc, Alexandre Lemay, and Cameron
Ayles, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of
Ottawa
Project Purpose
In June 2010, there was a report written by the
Journal of General Internal Medicine that showst in American Hospitals, almost
25 million deaths occurred due to medication errors between
1976-2006. There was
four main reasons in which this error occurred. These four
errors
were when the medication was ordered, when the medication was
transferred, when the medication was dispensed, and when the
medication was administered.
The purpose of this project is in the direction to eliminate
quarter of those deaths by designing a Pill Dispensing Robot
that will take the error out of the medicine being dispensed. By
removing the error from the dispensing of medication, there
would have been approximately 6.25 million lives that would not
have been ended accidentally.
Components and Circuit Diagram
The circuit diagram shown
above showcases the following electrical components:
2 Stepper Motors
2 Stepper Motor Drivers
2 Servo Motors
A Breadboard
An Arduino Uno Microcontroller
The materials and components
that were used for the mechanical side of this device were:
Acrylic (a 2’x6’ Sheet was
purchased)
Multiple 3D-Printed parts
(gears, wheels, rails, platform)
2 Rods (one threaded and one
smooth)
Various Odds and Ends (bolts,
rubber wheels)
Process
When starting a project you
need to start with an Idea or some sort of inspiration for your
project. Upon asking around, our supervisor suggested that we
create an application for an existing autonomous robot and
preferably with a biomedical mechanical application. We decided
that a pill dispenser would be a good idea seeing as it is
practical and would be easy to install on this robot.
Design
Process
First we came up with several
different designs for the robot and we ranked them in how
practical they were versus how hard to program they are. We
still drew ridiculous ones since you can still draw inspiration
from a ridiculous design.
After we came up with an idea,
we created a rough draft of the robot as well as a circuit
diagram. The next step was to make a budget. Being students and
having to spend your own money on a project is difficult as it
is, therefore we tried to minimize costs where we could by
getting rid of some of the more complicated parts. After we
assessed our budget, we made modifications to our overall design
and created a finalized design. Then we ordered our parts and
bought our materials. Next comes the construction process:
For our project, we decided to use acrylic to build the frame
because it looks very clean but at the same time is very easy to
cut and machine. We had to use a 2’ by 6’ sheet that we bought
at a local plastic manufacturer called Canus plastics.
We decided to 3d print many of
our parts through a friend, but, 3d printing is very tedious as
it is a new technology. A few issues we had included: having to
break up several parts because they are too big to print, parts
taking an incredibly long time to print and the warping and
shrinkage of parts.
Once we had all of our
materials, we started cutting out the required pieces and
constructing the frame of the robot. We then used glue to mount
many of the pieces as it is easier than screwing everything
together.
After some fine tuning and a
few modifications, we finalized the project.
Conclusion
The pill dispenser was designed to rotate around a central point
and having a platform move up and down was successful. We have
proved that we can get the pill dispenser to work with this
proof-of-concept. With the implementation of this device, we
would see deaths in hospitals across the world be avoided due to
dispensing errors.
