Abstract
Technological developments in the health sector for the safety of neonates are essential. Such efforts are needed to curb the increase in premature infant mortality cases caused by bacteria, asphyxia, infections, and poor management of facility equipment. Furthermore, preterm and other at-risk babies have low ability to regulate temperature and produce body heat as characterized by their dry skin conditions; hence, the need for baby incubators. For their operation, these baby incubators provide strict regulated energy change that is influenced by heat transfer caused by the surrounding atmospheric temperature and humidity. This paper presents the design, construction, and performance study of a proposed Fuzzy-PID hybrid control system for regulating temperature and humidity in a baby incubator. To accomplish its goal, the proposed controller must be able to distribute heat and maintain humidity in the incubator under fluctuating atmospheric conditions to keep the baby’s body warm. Performance tests of the proposed hybrid controller were conducted by comparing temperature and humidity outputs in the baby incubator against predetermined expected values. Results show that the proposed controller is able to successfully achieve and maintain the temperature and humidity set points. Further examination also suggests that the proposed Fuzzy-PID hybrid control offers an improved overall system response performance compared to the PID controller.
Highlights
Premature infant deaths are caused by several reasons including infection, asphyxia, and poor facility management [1], with most occurring in under-developed and developing countries [2]
Since heat transfer signifies a change in atmospheric temperature and relative humidity in a place or room [4] [5–7]; the ability to maintain and control the amount of heat transfer in baby incubator is very important
The results show that the temperature control with the proposed Fuzzy-Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) has a faster response to reach the set point than that of using the PID alone
Summary
Premature infant deaths are caused by several reasons including infection, asphyxia, and poor facility management [1], with most occurring in under-developed and developing countries [2]. These unfortunate incidents the first month after birth occur mainly due to negligence in maintaining temperature and humidity in baby incubator as well as baby’s blood oxygen level. In low-income and developing countries, such negligence stems from staff shortage and the declining quality of medical equipment used in hospitals [3]. To address the issue with maintaining the temperature and humidity in a baby incubator; enhancing the quality of the critical medical equipment, a control system that can regulate heat transfer in the incubator is needed. One method of achieving this was presented in [8], where sustainable renewable energy based incubators employed a hybrid technique that combined the fuzzy Type-II interval, AHP-TOPSIS with MEA-MLSSVM
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