Smart Car Seat Senior Design Project

Death of infants and small children from hyperthermia as a result of being left or trapped in a vehicle for an extended period of time is a real concern for many parents. According the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 527 children have died since 1998 from heatstroke related causes in a parked car. There are several products on the market now or which are proposed for production to solve this problem; however, none of these have managed to become widespread due to malfunctioning devices and inconvenience to the caregiver. Our main objectives for this program are to:

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  Develop a model that addresses concerns and problems of other current products with similar functions
  
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  Create a working prototype of an infant car seat that alerts parents when they have inadvertently left their child in the car, employing a reed switch mechanism and radio frequency one-way transmitter
  
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  Ensure that our product is cost-effective and marketable to our target consumers
  

PROBLEM INTRODUCTION

Since 1998, heatstroke resulting from being left alone in a hot vehicle has killed an average of 38 children annually, a total of 527 deaths.¹ A nonscientific media survey done by Jan Null of San Francisco State University found that between 1998 and 2009, over 50% of all vehicle-related heatstroke fatalities occurred in children aged two years or younger.¹

Warm days and enclosed vehicles together create a situation especially dangerous for infants and young children for two main reasons. Firstly, children are more vulnerable to heatstroke than adults. They cannot escape a hot vehicle. Their bodies have less surface area relative to their volume, which means they have less skin available to dissipate heat.² They also are not yet able to sweat efficiently.² As a result, an environment that seems to an adult caretaker to be cool enough to be safe could be perilous for a toddler. Secondly, vehicle cabins can heat quicker than the outside air on a warm or sunny day. The interior of a car parked facing the sun on a day in the low 80s can reach 110°F within 45 min.³ Objects within the car, like seat belts, can easily become hot enough to cause second-degree burns.⁴ If the weather is hot or humid enough, a child can suffer fatal heatstroke in a vehicle even if multiple windows have been left open.³ In Tennessee, hyperthermia severe enough to send the child into coma has occurred after spending as little as 30 min in a hot vehicle.⁵

These deaths are almost always accidents. Null also analyzed the media accounts of why the children in his data sample had been in the car. In 51% of incidents, the child’s caretaker forgot the child was in the back seat and left the car. In 30%, the child was playing unobserved in a parked car and became trapped. In 17%, the caretaker intentionally left the child in the car, not realizing the danger.¹ Therefore, several manufacturers have introduced products to remind or alert caretakers that their child is in the car. However, a 2012 U.S. DOT-commissioned survey of the market found no available product to be both reliable and convenient, and none distinguished between a temperate and a warm vehicle.¹ This Senior Design Project will design a product to remind a caregiver who has forgotten or intentionally left a child aged two years or younger in the car of the presence of their child and to alert passersby if the car environment becomes dangerously warm.

DESIGNS IN THE MARKET

As of July 2012, 18 devices designed to prevent infant heat stroke in unattended cars have been developed.¹ Each technology approaches the problem from a different way. Some devices require a reminder key fob or bracelet, while another disarms the car to lower its windows. Despite these differences in implementation, all devices perform the same main function: sensing the presence of a child in an unattended car. A 2012 DOT- Commissioned Report put three of these devices to the test in both standard and misuse scenarios. Two of them were pressure pad based systems, and the other detected the presence of a child with a safety clip. All of the devices were deemed inconsistent and unreliable.¹

Our product will be differentiated from those currently available by three attributes: improved reliability, hot environment detection, and a graduated alarm system. Improved reliability will please customers frustrated by constantly resetting other devices and will better protect children. Hot environment detection will allow the device to distinguish between a child left in a car, who is in an unsafe situation but whose life is not known to be at risk, and a child left in a hot car, who should be rescued immediately by bystanders if necessary. The graduated alarm system will reduce the likelihood that a caregiver would become frustrated by constant false or exaggerated alarms and choose to ignore them all or discontinue product use.

We hope to educate parents about the risks of leaving children unattended in a car for extended periods of time. We hope to partner with a car seat company such as Graco to make the car seat monitor an included feature in the car seats. If the car seat monitor integrated into the car seat is successful, we will look into partnering with General Motors to connect the Smart Car Seat with OnStar for a more technologically advanced alert system.

We hope to have a finished product by the end of the grant period. If the product is not completed, we hope that another group will continue it next year. We believe the product will succeed because we have proficient group members with readily available knowledge and resources. We are dedicated to finding a solution to the growing number of deaths associated with infants left in cars.

This design project will be considered a success if the final product can reliably sense the presence of an infant in a car seat and warn the driver or authorities after a period of being left in a parked car rising to extreme temperature. Distinct measures of success in the engineering design arise from improvements made on existing designs that have not been widely accepted due to certain problem areas including: damage caused by spills on technology that is not water resistant, poor accuracy in sensing the presence of an infant and failure to employ a sufficient range to contact the driver. These issues of concern contribute to the lack of a satisfactory product currently available on the market, despite the rising incidence of child mortality in hot cars.

Our design team is made up of Alayna Boland, Michelle Goodman, Jessica Kim, Monica Kruse, Haley Nesmith, and Chelsea Stowell. We are advised by Dr. Kevin Seale.

1. 
   Arbogast, K. B., Belwadi, A., Allison, M. U.S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Report No. DOT HS 811 632. July 2012. Reducing the Potential for Heat Stroke to Children in Parked Motor Vehicles: Evaluation of Reminder Technology. www.nhtsa.gov.
   

2. 
   Krous, H. F., Nadeau, J. M., Fukumoto, R. I., Blackbourne, B. D., Byard, R. W. (2001). Environmental hyperthermic infant and early childhood death: Circumstances, pathologic changes, and manner of death. The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology 22(4):374-382.
   

3. 
   Roberts, K. B., Roberts, E. C. (1976). The automobile and heat stress. Pediatrics 58(1):101-104.
   

4. 
   Saitz, E. W. (1975). Seat belt buckle burn. Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine 129(12):1456-1457.
   

5. 
   Wadlington, W. B., Tucker, A. L., Fly, F., Greene, H. L. (1976). Heat stroke in infancy. American Journal of Diseases of Children 130:1250-1251.
   

*Table and product descriptions reprinted from Arbogast, 2012.

Eighteen products were identified with 11 of the 18 being commercially available. Those not commercially available are marked with an asterisk.