An average of 38 children
die each year after being left in hot cars.
But things might change very soon. Five recent Rice
University graduates have designed a new car seat accessory that can not only
protect infants accidentally left in hot cars but can also notify caregivers
and emergency personnel.
Audrey Clayton, Rachel Wang, Jason Fang, Ralph LaFrance
and Ge You, who graduated from Rice May 16, spent the past year working at
Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen to develop Infant SOS, a car
seat accessory to protect infants left in potentially lethal hot
cars.
Clayton said it’s no surprise that most of the tragic
incidents involving children left in cars occur in the summer months. “It works
out to about a child every two to three days, which is a shocking statistic,”
she said. “Our hope is that our device can prevent this from happening.”
The device is fitted into standard car seats and can
issue auditory, visual and text alerts when it senses that the infant is in
danger. It also features a passive cooling system designed to keep an infant’s
core temperature below a critical point (heat stroke begins at 104 degrees
Fahrenheit) until emergency responders arrive.
The alert system is the accessory’s primary means of
protection and includes sensors to detect if the car is moving, if the child is
still in the seat and if the temperature in the vehicle begins to rise. If the
device detects that the car is parked with the child still in its seat, the
device’s alert responses will be activated after 30 seconds, beginning with
visual and auditory alerts. The visual alert is a flashing row of red LED
lights that lines the car seat and the audio alert is an alarm. After five
minutes, if the infant has not been removed from the seat, text alerts are sent
out. The device can be programmed to send texting alerts to up to 10 people,
including emergency responders.
“The system is designed to do as much as it can to get
to as many people as possible,” Fang said. “And hopefully, passersby can see
the LED lights and can respond as well.”
In case of delayed responses, the cooling system can
act as an emergency backup to extend the infant’s chance of survival. A
heat-triggered material acts as a main heat absorber to keep the infant’s core
temperature at a safe level for as long as possible.
“The benefit of our project is not only the alert
system, but also the cooling system,” Wang said. “The best way to keep a child
alive is to completely remove them from the car seat inside a hot car. However,
if the parents do not immediately return to the car, we need to ensure that the
baby stays cool until help arrives. The device actually absorbs heat from the
environment and the baby and is able to keep the baby cool longer, giving extra
time for the parent to return or for someone to notice the flashing lights and
see that a baby is trapped in the car.”
The project was funded by Dr. Susan Baldwin ’82 through
her company, Mamoru Enterprises LLC. She proposed the senior design project
after learning that the child of one of her patients had nearly died in an
overheated car.
The students' ultimate goal is to make the removable
accessory easy to use and accessible to a large market. The students expect the
device to cost approximately $150.
“The reason I chose engineering in the first place is
to be able to make a difference and be able to build a product that would be
able to help people,” Wang said. “I really appreciate the opportunity of being
able to work on something that could potentially save infant lives in the
future.”
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