Micromachine Robot for Automotive Diagnostics, Visualization & Sensing

"Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) may play a significant role in adapting new sensors for use in currently deployed vehicle fleets. We anticipate that miniaturized fluid pumps and metering devices that are integrated into "lab-on-a-chip" systemswill allow unprecendented on-board diagnostic capabilities for critical vehicle fluids, such as powertrain lubricants and hydraulic fluids. Through SBIR activitiy, ASTI proposes to design and prototype a "micromachine robot" called the On-Board FluidQuality Laboratory with a supporting system of on-board and off-board user-interfaces, communication busses, data acquisition and analysis, and logistics planning tools. The significance of an On-Board Fluid Quality Laboratory and its supporting systems isthree-fold: (1) The innovation will nearly eliminate the per-vehicle labor time now required to manually sample vehicle fluids and package them to delivery to analysis laboratories. Assume 1 hour of labor per vehicle per sample; at four samples per yearwith a pool of 10,000 vehicles. Based on these assumptions, this represents a potential savings of 20,000 labor hours per year. Further assumptions based upon an average labor rate of $50.00 per hour can be used to derive a cost savings of $1,000,000.(2) The innovation will also dramatically reduce laboratory analysis expenses. Assuming the fleet size and sampling noted above and an added expense of $25.00 per sample in laboratory anal