The Pink Robots came in first place out of the 24 middle school teams that competed in their first round qualifier at Montclair High School on Saturday. The Pink Robots will advance to the NJ state tournament to be held on Dec. 12 in Mount Olive, NJ.
Over 350,000 Americans suffer from kidney failure. A number that rises by 7% each year. Kidney failure is caused primarily by diabetes and high blood pressure, but genetics are also a factor. When kidneys fail, the circulatory system becomes polluted with fluid that would normally be released as urine—and toxins are released into the blood. Once diagnosed, victims of kidney failure spend from 9-14 hours per week, receiving life-preserving blood cleaning treatments. The cleaning process is called dialysis.
As part of our research project for the 2010 FLL Robotics competition, which is focusing on biomedical engineering as its theme, we set out to come up with a comfortable and more mobile solution to long and hard dialysis treatments.
Imagine yourself in the same room for 9–14 hours a week. Beeping alarms going off non-stop and sitting with a needle in your arm or a catheter in your chest. It’s cold and all you have to warm yourself with are thin, see-through drape sheets. The smell of bleach and vinegar linger in the air. You feel bored as your own blood is pulled out of your body, cleaned, and pumped back in to your veins. You become dizzy. There’s not much to do except read or watch TV for four hours, three times a week, for the rest of your life.
Now imagine that you are in control of your schedule. You can decide when, where and how to fit your treatments into your life.
Our solution is a portable dialysis backpack, which would provide patients with a one-hour treatment that could be taken anywhere. And since research has proven that shorter, more frequent treatments reduce trauma and stress to the patient’s body, the dialysis backpack could even help patients live a longer life in addition to a better one.
A young patient going from one parent’s house to another’s for a visit, could do so easily. This would improve their lives on a daily basis.
A college student could plan their treatments around their schedule, rather than the other way around.
With the dialysis backpack, a patient is more able to travel on vacation. They would not need to coordinate treatments at far-off clinics, and could travel to destinations that they otherwise would not be able to.
We interviewed Sarah Traylor, a Certified Dialysis Technician at Fresenius in East Orange, NJ, and one of her 17 year old dialysis patients.
We also interviewed Dr. Brian Radbill, a leading Nephrologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.
Together, we brainstormed additional ideas and features for the dialyisis backpack, such as:
In order to continue to refine our idea, we are reaching out to the community for further input. Do you know somebody on dialysis? Do you have experience that could help us make our product better? If so, please and let us know your thoughts.
When we looked for solutions, we found that there is no perfect solution to the problem of nuclear waste. The problems with transporting nuclear waste long distances by truck to storage facilities is that people don’t want it coming through their neighborhood because it could spill or get into an accident. People are also concerned that it cold be stolen by terrorists.
Some of the ways we came up with for solving this problem are to require each state to build there own storage facility which would minimize the need to transport radioactive material over long distances. This may lead to better solutions and research as more states will share the problem. Another possible solution is for the government to build one large storage facility for all states, however, this still has the problem of transporting the waste long distances. Other people believe that the best solution is to launch nuclear waste into space.
There really is no perfect solution for handling these materials, but the Pink Robots are committed to participating in the conversation. In the days to come, each member of our team will be posting their own, additional ideas, about how to best handle the waste here on our website. Stay tuned!
We would like to invite all of our fans to come cheer us on at the 2009 First Lego League Tournament at Steinert High School in Hamilton, NJ on Saturday, November 21. Opening ceremonies are at 1:00 pm. Hope to see you there!
As part of our research on the transportation of nuclear materials to, through, and out of hospitals, we visited Mountainside Hospital in Montclair, NJ. We met with Adrienne Kropa, a nuclear technician and Robert Sasso, a physicist. We learned that nuclear materials are delivered to the hospital’s nuclear pharmacy and are transported in lead based containers.
The material is then introduced into a patient’s body by injection, swallowing, or getting implanted. This imaging machine can detect problems like cancer, but it can take years for the effect to be seen. The material can be in a liquid, gas, or solid form, depending on how it will be used in treatment. One common application for nuclear medicine is to detect cancer by doing x-rays on the patient’s body. Doctors send waves through their bodies and get results back. The material we put into the body can be detected by using special cameras on the machine.
The nuclear waste from Mountainside Hospital gets sent to a dump in South Carolina but only three states are allowed to dump there.
The Pink Robots are proud to introduce the newest member of the team, RPINK1. Over the next few months we will be working very closely together to learn, program and execute a range of different missions as part of the robotics portion of the competition.
Six friends from Glenfield Middle School in Montclair, NJ have joined forces to create the Pink Robots, one of First Lego League’s only all-girl robotics teams.
HCCS specializes in online compliance and competency training courses for healthcare facilities.
Thinkso is a design and marketing firm that helps clients achieve their mission through strategic thinking.
FLL inspires young people to be science and technology leaders by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs.