Source: http://www.google.com/patents/US6472988?dq=6,373,753
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Patent US6472988 - System for monitoring wearers of protective respiratory equipment - Google PatentsSearch Images Maps Play YouTube News Gmail Drive More »Sign inAdvanced Patent SearchPatentsA monitoring system for monitoring wearers of respiratory equipment and a mobile part and to a base station for use in such a system. To reduce the risks for wearers of respiratory equipment, system data are continuously transmitted to a base station by a mobile part which is attached to a compressed-air...http://www.google.com/patents/US6472988?utm_source=gb-gplus-sharePatent US6472988 - System for monitoring wearers of protective respiratory equipmentAdvanced Patent SearchPublication numberUS6472988 B1Publication typeGrantApplication numberUS 09/700,894PCT numberPCT/EP1999/002573Publication dateOct 29, 2002Filing dateApr 16, 1999Priority dateMay 19, 1998Fee statusPaidAlso published asCA2337631A1, DE19822412A1, DE19822412B4, DE59914367D1, EP1077742A1, EP1077742B1, EP1077742B2, WO1999059676A1Publication number09700894, 700894, PCT/1999/2573, PCT/EP/1999/002573, PCT/EP/1999/02573, PCT/EP/99/002573, PCT/EP/99/02573, PCT/EP1999/002573, PCT/EP1999/02573, PCT/EP1999002573, PCT/EP199902573, PCT/EP99/002573, PCT/EP99/02573, PCT/EP99002573, PCT/EP9902573, US 6472988 B1, US 6472988B1, US-B1-6472988, US6472988 B1, US6472988B1InventorsSven Feld, Christian Giudici, Thorsten KiesewalterOriginal AssigneeDeutsche Telekom AgExport CitationBiBTeX, EndNote, RefManPatent Citations (5), Referenced by (12), Classifications (7), Legal Events (5) External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, EspacenetSystem for monitoring wearers of protective respiratory equipment
US 6472988 B1Abstract
A monitoring system for monitoring wearers of respiratory equipment and a mobile part and to a base station for use in such a system. To reduce the risks for wearers of respiratory equipment, system data are continuously transmitted to a base station by a mobile part which is attached to a compressed-air breathing apparatus and which has a radio transmitter. Alarm and warning signals are visually and/or audibly communicated both to the wearer of the respiratory equipment and to a monitoring person as a function of the system data.
The present application is the U.S. national stage application, under 35 U.S.C. � 371, of PCT Application No. PCT/EP99/02573, having an international filing date of Apr. 16, 1999.
The present invention relates to a monitoring system for monitoring wearers of respiratory equipment, and to a mobile part and to a base station for use in such a system.
Fire departments employ respiratory equipment, so-called compressed-air breathing apparatuses, which are independent of ambient air conditions. Such apparatuses enable fire fighters to still carry on their work in rooms which are completely smoke-filled. The breathing air required for this is carried on the back in one or two steel or composite-material cylinders. The operating pressure of such cylinders is 200 or 300 bar depending on type, with a cylinder capacity of 4 and 6 liters, respectively, of compressed air. Use is made, for example, of a Dr�ger PA94+ compressed-air breathing apparatus with two 4-liter, 200 bar steel cylinders. In this case, the air supply is 1600 liters, which is sufficient for a mission, or use, duration of approx. 20 minutes in the case of medium-heavy work. Normally, the mission time of the personnel, who act exclusively as a team, is monitored by a fireman who makes a note of the starting time of the mission. If, after a certain length of time, there has been no communication from a team, then action can be taken and rescue measures initiated. However, such a manual procedure involves some inherent risks, because the monitoring fireman must calculate for all personnel the remaining mission time, which may vary because of different starting times. Furthermore, it is difficult to locate a fireman who is in distress if he is unable to trigger an alarm.
Consequently, an object of the present invention is to provide a monitoring system, a mobile part and a base station with which it is possible to monitor and protect wearers of respiratory equipment better than before during a mission and, in particular, in an emergency.
Hereinbelow, the present invention is elaborated upon with reference to the drawings, in which:
The monitoring system shown in FIG. 1 includes a base station 20, allocated to a monitoring person, as well as, for example, four mobile parts 21 which are able to communicate with base station 20 via a wireless connection, particularly via a radio channel. Each mobile part 21 is disposed on a compressed-air breathing apparatus 22 which can be strapped to the back of a respiratory-equipment wearer.
As already mentioned, mobile part 21 is attached to a compressed-air breathing apparatus 22 and is electrically connected by connecting cables to external sensors 42, 44, 46 and 48. One connection lead, for example, is routed via the left-hand carrying strap to chest height on the wearer, where it is connected to an emergency-call apparatus, while another lead is routed to headphone 80. Since, in the majority of cases, speed is important in the use of compressed-air breathing apparatus 22, attention has been paid to making user operation as simple as possible. The sequence of the entire process has been automated to such an extent that no control steps whatsoever by the wearer are required. The power supply is so designed that batteries 105 are always kept fully charged in the idle state. For this purpose, batteries 105 are connected to a battery charger. Mobile part 21 itself, however, is not active. When mobile part 21 and thus batteries 105 are removed from the holder containing the battery charger, voltage source 105 is automatically disconnected from the battery charger and mobile part 21 is activated. However, it now remains in the idle state until compressed-air breathing apparatus 22 is set in operation. If central control unit 30 of mobile part 21 then detects that the pressure at sensor 42 has risen to over 180 bar when working with a 200-bar compressed-air cylinder, or to over 270 bar in the case of a 300-bar compressed-air cylinder (minimum pressure which must be present at start of use), it sends an audible message, for example, via speech output apparatus 70 and headphone 80, to the wearer of the respiratory equipment that the unit is ready for operation: “Your apparatus is ready for use.” Immediately thereafter, central control unit 30 sends a data telegram via radio transmitter 60 and antenna 62 to base station 20 logging on mobile part 21 as active. Speech output apparatus 70 is used, for example, to announce the instantaneous pressure of compressed-air breathing apparatus 22 and to transmit the instantaneous pressure values to base station 20. Now, a time-measuring apparatus 90 is also started. From this point on, the pressure of compressed-air breathing apparatus 22 allocated to mobile part 21 is measured every 15 seconds. However, in order not to play back the announcement of the instantaneous pressure unnecessarily often, central control unit 30 first compares the instantaneous pressure to the last-measured value, which is stored in a memory 100. Only if the comparison reveals that the pressure has dropped by 10 bar or more is the new pressure value communicated via speech output apparatus 70 and headphone 80 to the respiratory-equipment wearer and transmitted to base station 20. Otherwise the value is simply stored in memory 100, which may be an EEPROM, in mobile part 21 and/or in base station 20 in order to be evaluated later, for example, in a personal computer connected to mobile part 21 via interface 77. Memory 100 has a size of, for example, 256 bytes, which is sufficient for recording the pressure values up to a mission duration of approximately one hour. If the mission time should exceed this value, which is not to be expected, the oldest pressure values are deleted, so that the values from the last hour are always available (rolling-map memory).
For reasons of the memory space available in speech output apparatus 70, the pressure is not announced to the precise measured value in bar, although the measurement by pressure sensor 42 would permit this, but rather the pressure is rounded off to values of 5 or 10. Of course, the precise measured values are always transmitted to base station 20. The measuring cycle is repeated, for example, every 15 seconds until the pressure of compressed-air breathing apparatus 22 has fallen below 60 bar or until the emergency-call apparatus is triggered by the wearer of the respiratory equipment. In the former case, the announcement of the remaining mission time/pressure is additionally supplemented by the spoken warning: “Retreat immediately”. If the wearer triggers the emergency-call apparatus before the pressure of compressed-air breathing apparatus 22 has fallen below the threshold value, an audible confirmation is first issued via speech output apparatus 70: “Your emergency call is being transmitted”. This process can then no longer be stopped or canceled. Thereupon, control unit 30 of mobile part 21 sends a double data telegram with the emergency call to base station 20 and activates an audible and/or visual signal generator 10, which makes it easier to locate the wearer. Thereafter, the measuring cycle is continued, i.e., at intervals of 15 seconds, the pressure is checked and, if appropriate, announced and transmitted to base station 20. Renewed operation of the emergency-call apparatus does not now lead to any further transmission.
A further safety apparatus is a motion sensor 44, known also as a “dead man's circuit”, which reacts to a lack of movement on the part of the wearer of the respiratory equipment. This motion sensor 44 can be installed additionally or on its own. If the wearer of the respiratory equipment does not move for a defined period of time, he/she is informed by an announcement via speech output apparatus 70 that an alarm will soon be triggered. The wearer can acknowledge the announcement by making a movement. In this case, the counting of the time starts anew. If no such acknowledgment is given, the main alarm to locate the wearer is triggered via signal generator 10 and an emergency-call data telegram is transmitted to base station 20. This alarm corresponds to the alarm which is triggered when the emergency-call apparatus is operated.
During the mission, the instantaneous pressure, temperature and anticipated remaining mission time can be regularly announced to the respiratory-equipment wearer by speech output apparatus 70. Additionally, there is an audible warning of a low battery 105 and verbal confirmation that an emergency call has been transmitted. All of these functions are executed, for example, by an IC of type ISD 2560, which, with an 8 kHz sampling rate (equivalent to ISDN telephone quality), is capable of storing speech in analog form for up to 60 seconds. In contrast to the otherwise customary digital storage methods in which the sound information is previously digitized and stored in a RAM memory, this IC uses a relatively new analog storage method. In this context, the instantaneous values are stored directly in analog manner in the form of a charge in a memory cell without making a detour via a converter. This results in a number of decisive advantages over the conventional method: the speech quality is noticeably better with considerably reduced memory requirement, and no voltage is required for maintenance of data. The contents of the speech memory can be directly addressed at 100 ms intervals; thus, it is readily possible to generate speech messages made of combined syllables. This makes it possible to speak individual numbers and text modules into the IC which are then retrieved by microcontroller 30 in the required sequence. Thus, an example of a typical announcement is: “Remaining time 25 minutes; cylinder pressure 180 bar.” A battery voltage which is too low is reported with “Caution: low battery level.” Readiness for operation is announced by mobile part 21 with “Your apparatus is ready for operation.” And the issuing of an emergency call is confirmed with “Your emergency call is being transmitted.” The loudspeaker may be a small earphone or a headphone 80 integrated in the helmet.
FIG. 4 shows, in the form of a block diagram, an exemplary embodiment of base station 20. The entire base station 20 is controlled by a central control unit 30′. An operator is able to enter control commands using a keyboard 110. Messages from the monitoring system are output on a liquid-crystal display 170. Central control unit 30′ receives data from each mobile part 21 via a UHF receiver 120 and a decoder 140. For example, seven light-emitting diodes—of which merely three, identified by reference numerals 152, 154 and 156, are shown—are used for the visual display of the operating state. Firstly, there are four red illuminated displays, each of which is allocated to one of the mobile parts 21. They indicate that an emergency call has been triggered. A further red light-emitting diode (LED) signals a low battery voltage in base station 20. The other two green LEDs are used to indicate the strength of the received UHF radio signal and the valid received data. A buzzer 160 is used to provide an audible output of warning and alarm messages. Base station 20 collects the incoming data from mobile parts 21 and displays them on liquid-crystal display 170. To ensure the readability of the information even in darkness or when there is insufficient illumination, display 170 is equipped with background illumination. It operates automatically and is switched on or off depending on the ambient brightness. In addition, it is possible to switch off the illumination generally by pressing a key. Base station 20 is controlled, for example, by keypad 110, which includes 3�4 fields, and which can be made of a self-adhesive membrane keyboard. This keyboard 110 can also be of splashproof design.
Base station 20 is inserted, for example, in a charging holder, e.g., in a vehicle, in which the batteries of base station 20 are constantly kept fully charged. If base station 20 is removed from the charging holder, it is automatically activated and commences a self-test in which display 170, light-emitting diodes 152, 154, 156 and warning buzzer 160 are tested. There is also a check of the battery voltage under load. Once this test, which lasts just a few seconds, has been completed, base station 20 is in standby mode and waits for the data telegram from a mobile part 21. Incoming data are checked for correctness in base station 20 and are then indicated immediately on liquid-crystal display 170. Each of the four mobile parts 21 has on liquid-crystal display 170 a separate display line showing next to each other, for example, the mobile part number, the last-communicated cylinder pressure, the last communicated temperature, the mission time elapsed till now and the anticipated remaining mission time. Possible displays in a status column are “OK” for normal status, “LOW” for reaching of the retreat pressure (<60 bar), “SOS” for a triggered emergency call and “BAT” for low battery voltage. In this context, the “SOS” display has the highest priority and replaces an existing “BAT” or “LOW” display. An incoming emergency call from a mobile part 21 is signaled audibly and visually. The corresponding red warning LED flashes, while buzzer 160 emits an alternating alarm tone. This message must be acknowledged by the user by simultaneously pressing the two “Alarm off” keys on keyboard 1 10. Buzzer 160 stops sounding, but the warning LED remains on until mobile part 21 has been logged off.
If the pressure of a compressed-air breathing apparatus 22 falls below the value of 60 bar, the status of the associated mobile part 21 is changed to “LOW”. When a data telegram is received from this mobile part 21, there is additionally a short audible warning tone and the respective line flashes on briefly.
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