Weekly Update 2/09/18

We have begun preliminary assembly of the items we have purchased. The smaller pumps fit fairly well into the pillow, however, there are several problems: first, the seal is not airtight. We will need to find a sealing mechanism that keeps air in the pillow. Second, the pillow only raises a few inches, which may not be enough to substantially assist the user. We have decided to purchase a second pillow that will attach to the first. This will increase the height that the user will be elevated. We will also need to purchase or create t-valves to assemble all the pumps together. Since the pumps already have one-way valves preinstalled, we will not need to worry about installing our own into the t-valves. There should be absolutely no issue with the pumps capacity to inflate two of these pillows because the air chambers of one of the arm pumps are about half the total capacity of one of the pillows.

For testing, we have decided to use a standard economy wheelchair because this seems to be the most common for people in our low income target market.