New NASA Contract - June 1, 2024
Details TBA
April 18, 2024 - PolyVent arrived at Colorado Mesa University
On April 18th of 2024, Robert L. Read travelled to Colorado to introduce and deliver the PolyVent Educational Platform to Dr. Michelle Mellenthin and Talles Santos from Colorado Mesa University's Electrical Engineering Program. This was also the same day as our virtual inventor gathering, so that evening we heard from Dr. Mellenthin and Professor Santos on their research in pulmonology and electrical impedance tomography (EIT) while our Founder, Robert Read, presented briefly on the PolyVent.
Finished 2nd NASA Contract
The 2nd NASA contracted project efforts ended in Oct. of 2023.
Public Invention to Present two talks at FOSDEM
We will be presenting a talk on the PolyVent at FOSDEM, and also introducing GOSQAS. The Global Open Source Quality Assurance System is an alliance of many humanitarian engineering non-profits which proposes to improve quality by building a free and open asset-tracking and provenance-tracking system.
Second NASA Contract
In early January, Public Invention got a second contract with NASA to design and build a digital control system for an advanced solid-state oxygen concentrator they are developing. (We are only doing the control system, not the ceramics and the chemistry.) This has huge implications for global health, and we are proud to be a part of it.
PolyVent Educational Platform Tested at Rice University
In early December 2022, the PolyVent Educational Platform was used in an extra credit class exercise by Senior biomedical engineering students at Rice University, who gave it high marks.
NASA Contract
This summer NASA awarded a sub-contract through Jacobs' Engineering to advise on building a control system for a Ceramic Oxygen Generator. This work is closely related to work we have already done on "the Ox" oxygen generator and PolyVent/VentOS system. Everything we do is open-source, you can see the system here.
Journal Paper Published
This work started with the Public Invention Mathathon of 2018, and is now finally culminated! Check out the video!Read, Robert L. "Calculating the Segmented Helix Formed by Repetitions of Identical Subunits thereby Generating a Zoo of Platonic Helices." Mathematics 10.14 (2022): 2533. https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/10/14/2533
Ferrofluid Paper Released
On March 30th of 2022, Veronica Stuckey and Robert L. Read released a pre-print research paper called, "A Novel Passive Ferrofluid One-way (Check) Valve," on Engineering Archive (EngrXIV): Link Here!
Paper Published
Nov., 2021: Along with Dr. Erich Schulz and Ben Coombs, we published a summary of the "Open-source hardware and the great ventilator rush of 2020 ". https://www.anzca.edu.au/resources/college-publications/australasian-anaesthesia-(the-blue-book)/blue-book-2021.pdf#page=18
Paper Presented
On September 8th, Robert L. Read presented a paper at the 2nd IMA conference on Robotics and Mathematics entitled "Calculating the Segmented Helix Formed by Repetitions of Identical Subunits". This work came out of the 2018 Public Invention Mathathon.
RespiCon
On May 28th, Public Invention hosted RespiCon, a virtual conference on open source respiration policy and technology. This was attended by 115 people and many valuable connections were formed.
On January 9, 2021, Public Invention hosted a conference called PubInvCon 2021: Work to be Done! The conference was a coming together of dedicated inventors, volunteers, scientists, students, and more interested in humanitarian inventing “in the public, for the public.” We discussed our successes of 2020 and outlined the hard work still to be done in 2021.
On November 7th-8th, Dr. Robert Read delivered a paper coauthored by Avinash Baskaran to the ICMME 2020: the 7th International Conference on Mechatronics and Mechanical Engineering.
On Tuesday October 20th, Public Invention was part of a successful demo by PolyVent to the Mayor of Linz, Austria.
As a follow-up to our Vent-Con event in May, we hosted VentCon QA in July, a free, virtual mini-conference that discussed open source ventilators on the topic of Quality Assurance and Regulatory Compliance. This conference was again supported by Helpful Engineering and Make.co.
In May, Public Invention hosted Vent-Con 2020, a conference about Open Source Ventilators. This was co-hosted by Make Magazine, HelpfulEngineering, and the Ventilators Collaboration Network.The conference was a big success with about 120 participants in attendance.
Avinash Baskaran, Megan Cadena, and Keeshan Patel make accepted proposal of a "soft Stewart platform" to the UT Create-a-thon
Avinash Baskaran Wins 1st Place in IEEE Professional Forum in Clear Lake, TX.
We have produced 26 open-source repos of work so far.
Our biggest accomplishment has been revitalizing the Tetrobot concept.
Paper About the PolyVent accepted to the American Society for Engineering Education
In June 2023, we will attend the American Society for Engineering Education Conference and present a paper about the PolyVent.
Published peer-reviewed academic journal article describing simple optimization of a tetrahelix.
In conjunction with the Greater Austin Chapter of Engineers Without Borders USA, invented the Armadillo, a portable Petrifilm Incubator: https://www.ewb.org.au/jhe/index.php/jhe/article/view/127.
The Gluss Project has demonstrated a very novel unconventional robot.
Developed a 3D printable optical linear sensor (with Keeshan Patel.)
Published an article on using the Raspberry Pi in Nuts and Volts (with Morgan Chen.)
The Gluss Pusher project is developing an inexpensive prototype linear actuator for building large, highly scalable robots.
We have published 3D plans for a legitimiate novel invention: The Turret Joint which is essential to the construciton of Gluss robots (this was invented by Song, Kwon, and Kim.)
We’ve created and published CoilChoice, and interactive tool for desiging electromagnetic coils.
This project later took 4th place on the Women in Technology Institute (WITI) Virtual Hackathon.
A team formed at the Austin Hack for Change Civic Hackathon won “Most Hacked Forward” superlative with ATX Preemie Warmer.
An educational double pendulum simulation has been created, as part of an unsolicited proposal to Montshire Science Museum for a physical exhibit. If any knows of a better double-pendulum simulation, please let me know.