......."John Doe" Apparatus.......
This project is still very hush-hush, hence the name "John Doe." The Monolithic Engineering team designed this 300 pound, life saving/sustaining apparatus in just 4 months. Responsibilities included, project management, architecture, software, circuit and control system design, containing three embedded micro-controllers, each running co-dependant real time code. This position, velocity, and pressure controlled system contained several servo motors ranging from 12W to 350W, fluid pumps, and many other linear (analog) loads ranging from 1W to 1000W. The multiple nested PID control loops were modified for predictive capture using Kalman filters. The measurement system contained more than ten channels, each with 12 bit ADCs, 4 of which were precision optical channels. The team wrote the C code for the inter-processor communication protocol, designed (and laid-out) all 4 PCBs, designed all the sub assembly test fixtures, test vectors as well as integrated and tested each prototype, while meeting all FDA, UL-2601, ISO-9001 standards.