Osteochondritis Dissecans

Osteochondritis DissecansBen Gordon and Alex TafroProblemOsteochondritis Dissecans is a dead bone in the elbow. It occurs from repetitive stressful motion, such as pitching a baseball or doing handstands in gymnastics. Blood flow to the tip of the elbow ends, causing it to slowly dissolve and causing immense pain.

SurgeryDuring the surgery, the doctors shave away the dead bone and a little bit of the good bone until it bleeds. Bleeding promotes healing and the elbow will eventually become healthy again.DevelopmentThe hardest part about the construction was building the drill. It was really tricky to build the gears around the motor in order to make the drill run smoothly. Also, we had to make it able to connect a light sensor to read where the tip of the drill is pointed. Realization

EvaluationThe robot can move up to the paper elbow and decide if there is an X or not on it. If there is, the robot will drill a hole, and if not it will not drill.I conducted 6 trials, 3 on the X and 3 on the white part of the elbow. It drilled on the X all three times, and didnt drill twice on the white part.The results are not perfect because the robot reads the elbow at different lengths. If it is far enough when it reads, the black X and the white give the same reading. For example, the robot may have been reading the white farther away the third time, making the sensor think there was an X. In order to fix this I might have to hold the elbow right up to the robot to have a constant distance every trial.

Extra credit video- The robot is moving forward and sensing the elbow. It is then reading to see if there is an X, and then drills. The second time, it read the white part and did not drill on the healthy part of the elbow.