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Designing a casing for the control unit of a virtual reality system for use in a hospital

Oorschot, C.H.C.L van (2014) Designing a casing for the control unit of a virtual reality system for use in a hospital.

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Abstract:In this assignment, a casing will be designed for Cinoptics for the controller of a Virtual Reality system. This assignment is part of the HBK-project which is financed by the foundation ‘Help Brandwonden Kids’. This project, in cooperation with the University Hospital in Leuven (UZ Leuven), is about improving the experience of the patient during the treatment of the burns of children. Using a game which is played with a head mounted display (also referred to as Virtual Reality headset or HMD), children will be distracted from the medical treatment and the pain experience will be reduced. The project is running for a few years now at the UZ Leuven and the next step in the process is to design an easy to handle controller that contains all electronic components which are needed in order to play the game. UZ Leuven has been testing with a older version of this VR-system for a while. They have been able to identify a couple of problems after testing this setup with both patients and nonpatients. A problem that has been identified, is the difficulty of cleaning the current setup. There are several hygiene regulations that must be met. In hospitals, chlorine and alcohol are used to disinfect products like the controller. These measures influence the chosen materials for the product. Setting up the current system is proven to be time-consuming and the personnel needs too much time to set up the VR-system. Another major problem is that the medical practitioners are not able to see the video images of the game that the patient is playing. Cinoptics already has a set of electronic components which are needed for the system to operate: a tablet to play the game and electronics which will ensure that the HMD can receive the video signal. During this assignment a battery, which ensures that the system can be used wirelessly, was added to this list. In order to generate ideas, the problem was divided into nine sub-problems. Through brainstorms, solutions were found and through morphological analysis, a choice was made between the different solutions and these chosen solutions were combined to form concepts. In addition to this method, other solutions were formed by looking at the configuration of different components in the controller. With this method, another couple of concepts have been developed. Eventually four concepts where designed and they were compared to each other in different ways together with Cinoptics and a choice was made for a final design. It was necessary to elaborate a few aspects of the design. The docking mechanism for the tablet, material and production method and the starting mechanism needed more detail. A small research was conducted in order to select possible materials and together with a research into several production methods it appeared that the best solution for producing the final product is vacuum casting with the use of silicone moulding. For this poly urethane (PU) can be used as a material. A company was found that could produce the prototypes as well as the final product in the desired materials. After this a 3D model was made in Solidworks. This model can be used as a starting point for production of the first prototype en also gives a good image of the appearance of the final product. Finally a brochure is made that enables Cinoptics to inform hospitals and other possible partners about the new product in the portfolio of Cinoptics.
Item Type:Essay (Bachelor)
Faculty:ET: Engineering Technology
Subject:20 art studies
Programme:Industrial Design BSc (56955)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/66170
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