the goal of this project is to design a head-tracking system that mitigates whiplash through active position monitoring and passive damping.
Our system is an innovative whiplash prevention system, engineered to track head movement of a vehicle passenger during travel and maintain a predetermined safety distance, effectively preventing neck rotation and associated injuries such as hyperflexion and hyperextension. Conventional headrests consist of a mounted static foam block on a manually adjustable height mechanism, effectively preventing whiplash when the head of the passenger is properly aligned. Unfortunately, achieving correct alignment is infrequent as head position changes throughout travel, and often headrests are not adjusted when getting into the car. Whiplash is a debilitating injury as it can stay with victims throughout their lifetime – even when the majority of accidents occur below 12 miles per hour.
Our design utilizes ultrasonic sensors for accurate positioning and motor-driven actuation through custom-designed telescoping actuators for a compact and efficient translation mechanism.
In the current prototyping stage, I’ve contributed to the motor implementation, prototype design and manufacturing, circuit design, mechanical design, and software development in Arduino.
<aside> 💡 This project highlights the integration of mechanical, controls, and software into a single seamless design. A main mechanical challenge I’m solving is the design of custom telescoping mechanisms that utilize helix threads so smooth, fast translation of rotary motion into linear actuation.
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The initial prototype depicted on the right features two ultra-sonic sensors, two motors, an Arduino Uno, and an H-Bridge for motor control.
Our team plans to expand the system to a four-sensor implementation and stepper motors.
Compressed telescoping mechanism
Extended telescoping mechanism.
The telescoping mechanism above was custom-designed to utilize the space-saving efficiency of a telescoping mechanism and to deploy rotational motion from our motors into horizontal actuation. The design is custom made from helix threads allowing for quick translation of rotation to linear motion. This actuator design employed in our design has several advantages including flexibility, compactness and space-saving, force-translation, and overall design aesthetics.
The main advantage of using rotational motion to drive our actuators and using a thread-based design is in the ability of these actuators to translate horizontal forces. This design utilizes rotation and engages the threads of each component meaning that in the event of a crash, as we are designing for, the forces translated into the actuators will not harm our motors by back driving them or by compressing the actuator, instead because of the thread engagement we can transfer all of those forces into our damping mechanism.