Project Sparthan: A Toolkit to Educate Others on Medical Device Technology
Team update, Global Product Development | By Alva Liang for team Sparthan: Davide Asnaghi, Haoling Li, Alva Liang, Juan Pablo Viaux
Project Sparthan started off as an electronics module with one purpose: to improve upper-limb prosthetics with an open-source, low-cost solution for those with congenital hand differences.
The Backstory
Project Sparthan originated at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology from Alex Wong and Davide Asnaghi, two engineers with backgrounds in electronics and prosthetics design. They decided to develop the Sparthan Module as an effective, low-cost alternative to traditional prosthetics.
The Sparthan Module
The Sparthan Module, pictured below, is an electronics module that is capable of integrating with EMG sensors and motors to actuate and interface with 3D-printed prosthetic hands.
The Sparthan Module contains Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capabilities to interact with the Myo Armband, which contains eight EMG sensors to detect muscle signals. The muscle signals are processed to represent different hand gestures, which can then be used to actuate the motors connected to the motor drivers on the Sparthan Module. The motors are connected to strings that are wound by the motors to actuate the finger movement in the prosthetic hand. The picture below shows the latest prototype of the Sparthan Module, which was made to be more compact and contains motor encoding for precise motor positioning and speed control.
Exoskeleton Design
The Sparthan Module coupled with the 3D printed prosthetic hand was deemed a success, and an exoskeleton design was pursued. Davide recruited his teammates, Alva Liang, Juan Pablo Viaux, and Haoling Li, who are three Master of Engineering students.
The exoskeleton went through multiple rounds of iteration before achieving the current product. Through experimentation, the material selected for our current design is NinjaFlex, a 3D printable polymer that is flexible and durable. There was also an emphasis on making the exoskeleton adjustable, so holes were added in different places on the finger scaffolds to adjust for different finger thicknesses.
The exoskeleton was functional, but there are improvements to be made. For instance, the actuation mechanism’s footprint can be reduced. Steering away from 3D printing and moving towards processes that would decrease lead time would vastly improve the scaling of production for the exoskeleton.
Transitioning to a Medical Device Toolkit
During a kickoff meeting at the beginning of 2019, Davide proposed that we broaden Project Sparthan’s market.We decided to make Project Sparthan a module that can integrate with different accessories for an educational toolkit for people who want to learn about medical devices. This toolkit will contain different electrical and mechanical components geared towards fabricating of a diverse range of medical devices (including prosthetics and exoskeletons), allowing for the use of the Sparthan Module in research labs, classrooms, and for engineering enthusiasts.
Global Product Development: Ramping Up
To supplement our project and maximize its potential for scaling and manufacturing, the current team is taking the Global Product Development Course.
We hope that through this course, Project Sparthan will take big strides in developing a medical device toolkit!
Follow along with the Million Hands team and their Global Product Development classmates as they continue to develop their projects, drawing from expert insights, a field trip to Hong Kong and China, and more along the way.
Over the course of the semester, we’ll be sharing blog posts from each student team here on Medium (read a post from Team […] here). In the meantime, learn more about the course here.
