Development of a miniaturized respiratory sensor system
Funded by the ESA MAP programme, the Respiratory Sensor System (RSS) project has successfully developed a miniaturised sensor system for respiratory investigations. The final presentation has been held at ESTEC on 08/04/2008.
Project objectives
The main goals of this project can be summarised as follows:
- Development of new miniaturised planar sensor elements for O2 incl. flow simultaneously and CO2 (including flow simultaneously) for fast in-situ measurement
- Integration of the sensors into a breathing mask
- Development of the electronics for the fast operation and data acquisition
- Development of the software for sensor operation, data acquisition and analysis
- Development of sensors for additional gas species (H2 /CO)
- Commercialisation of the system
The main challenges have been the simultaneous flow measurement and flow cross sensitivities. Especially during phase 2 of the project, many development iterations lead to a very good applicability for the oxygen, CO2 and H2 sensors (including flow sensors respectively).
Project results
The RSS is a robust and easy to use system (very short preparation times), which meets requirements for a possible space application as well as the requirements for terrestrial applications in various fields (e.g. medicine, lung function diagnostics, fitness, combustion control, etc.)This miniaturised and mobile system avoids (for in-situ measurements) typical delay times and has a very fast response time.Its main advantages are:
- Fast response times for gas measurement t90 < 100ms
- Low breath resistance
- Fast flow measurement possible, including flow direction!
