Team:WHU-China/Evolution

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Hardware-evolution

We got the original idea from Toulouse_France 2016. They created a device to solve the problem of fungal contamination on cave murals. Inspired by them and to suit to our project, we thought our hardware should meet:

• Barrier for safety


• Installation for fixing fabrics


• Equipment for monitoring the process


• Device for adding engineered bacteria and substances

So we designed these basic components:

• Sealed housing to achieve internal and external isolation


• Magnetic chucks to fix the fabrics


• Temperature and pH detector


• Rotatable injector to add a specific sample in specific time

It led to the drafts shown below:

Based on this original idea, we drew our hardware by 3DMax and keep optimizing, here are our all prior generations:

Hardware 1.0

In the 1.0 generation, we used movable injector and slide track to add the engineered bacteria. The injector moved to the specified location to add the storage, so it could control the restoration region roughly. The fabrics would be fixed by the magnetic force and restored by the engineered bacteria in the work space under monitoring.

Hardware 2.0

Considering the stability and maintenance risk of movable injector, we changed it to a fixed one and installed the control valve. This change also improved the efficiency of adding.

But there were still many defects in the adding device, so in 3.0 generation we had some tries on the construction of pipes.

Hardware 3.0

Compared these four types, we chose concentric pipes for it have higher controllability and drew the 3.0 generation below. So far, our design for the adding device had finalized.

But there were still many detects in the adding device, so in 3.0 generation we had some tries on the construction of pipes.

Hardware 4.0

After the trip to Hangzhou, we knew the shape of weak area on the fabrics was irregular in most situations, it inspired us to create a light system to control the BC reinforcement. Meanwhile, we needed to make some adjustments to the hardware.

So in 4.0 generation, we set up some components to correspond to the light system design in gene-level.

We used the baffle units not light emitter units to control the shape of light. .

Hardware 5.0

After repeated discussions and exchanges about the safety concerns, we thought only the sealed housing to ensure the engineered bacteria not to leakage is not enough, so we designed suicide circuit and added the cleaning system to clean the fabric and the infrared-thermal detector to detect whether there are bacteria remain or not when the restoration is finished.

We had shown our 5.0 generation to other teams, some thought highly of it and offered many advice. It is worth raising that SZU-China suggested us consider more about the cost, for example, we could cut the cost by replacing the emitter array in our scanning system maybe.

Hardware 6.0

Inspired by SZU_China, we designed horizontal rotary with emitter row and concentric tracks to replace the emitter array. The emitter row rotates a circle along the track to finish a scanning cycle.

What’s more, we estimated the cost of our hardware for further application and made a report.

Thanks to all the help and effort from our teammates and other teams, the hardware evolved to the final generation.