State of the Art Review

STATE OF THE ART REVIEW:

The current market for container openers does not include many automated devices. Furthermore, these devices do not include medication containers in their range of operations. Existing products are focused on kitchen aids, aimed at assisting with larger items such as mayonnaise or pasta sauce type jars. Many of these devices are simple lever arms that still require the individual to grasp the container to remove the closure. Existing products that are used as an aid to open medication containers are manual. They provide a better grip of the closure. A similar design to what the team hopes to accomplish is semi-autonomous and still requires the end-user to grasp the container: Automated Pill Bottle Opener, Verdell Thornton, Patent Number 6,874,389. No product exists which provides a complete automatic solution. Due to the lack of a device that is automated in the market, the group feels that the presented design is a good intellectual property.

Current state-of-the-art technologies that could be applied to this problem include robotic end-effecters that emulate the human hand. The manual devices and their gripping mechanisms can be utilized to grip the container and closure. Household devices such as can-openers or printers can be analyzed to determine what type of motors or other components are employed to provide the various motions.