Bob's Main Squeeze

Relieving lower leg swelling with pneumatic pressure chambers

Skills

Client Relations
Third Party Integration
Patent Research
Prototyping

Internship Project

Problem

Our client’s multiple sclerosis causes his feet and calves to swell constantly. Without having much motor function, the only way to relieve his swelling is manual massages from his wife or aid.

Requirements

The solution should...

Have the same or better results than a 15 minute manual massage after one session
- Measured by foot and calf size reduction
Be easy to put on
- Client wants to slip in and out of solution

Be small enough to fit under his home desk
- Client works at home and spends most of his day at his desk
Be able use back to back, multiple times a day
- Previous solutions burned out if overused

Approach

Solution

Due to the internship’s time limitation, I was not able to finish this project. If I could continue, the next steps would be to merge the two boots into a single boot to have better coverage of the affected areas. Once this is completed, another round of user and performance testing would be completed. If this is successful, the design would be finalized and ready for our client's daily use.

Being an adopted project, the first step was to read through reports to understand the work and research done by the previous groups. From here, we assessed the previous solutions to determine whether they were worth continuing development or scrapping for a new solution. We decided to go a different direction with the project due to the various complications of the previous solutions.

Researching patents and general information about swelling management led us to investigating a pneumatic solution. We found an existing product that uses air chambers in a boot to massage the foot and calf area. However, user and performance testing proved that the boots, as is, failed only with requirement to be as effective as a manual massage.

To address this issue, we decided that adding more air chambers to each boot. This will allow for complete coverage of pressure all the way around the foot and calf. The air chambers from one boot, will be taken out and placed into the other. Both boots can be used on either foot.