XeThru Bot simulates breathing for sensor testing

Oslo, Norway, 1 July 2015 – Novelda , a developer and manufacturer of adaptive smart sensors, is offering a robot design created from Lego to support the testing of its advanced sensor modules. A new blog and video on Novelda’s website features its XeThru Bot, which simulates the chest movements that can be used to detect and monitor a person’s breathing.

The XeThru Bot, a robot built using LEGO Mindstorms components, provides a repeatable test bed that allows multiple respiration sensing scenarios to be emulated and measured with its high accuracy sensors. A particularly challenging example is detecting the tiny movements coming from a baby’s chest when inhaling and exhaling. By configuring the XeThru Bot to move a metal sphere in a defined pattern, it is easy to perform accurate and repeatable measurements. The system, being largely made from plastic, is ideal since it reduces the number of undesired reflections.

Novelda engineer, Jan Roar, shown in the video setting up the XeThru Bot, explains, “We use a 2cm metal sphere to emulate the radar cross section of a baby’s chest. The sphere is moved back and forth by a distance of just 4mm while data is recorded by the XeThru Explorer PC application. As you can see, the recorded data matches perfectly with data captured from a real sleeping baby.”

Instructions for building your own XeThru Bot can be downloaded https://community.xethru.com/resources/xethru-bot.31/ from Novelda’s community web page. The evaluation of Novelda’s respiration monitor and presence detection modules is supported by its XeThru Inspiration Kit, which can be ordered from the webshop. https://shop.xethru.com/kits/inspiration-kit.html

Novelda , www.xethru.com