COVID-19: Ferrari develops pulmonary ventilator

Ferrari has been at the forefront of automakers adapting their expertise to develop equipment to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Now Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow and the Italian Institute of Technology have joined forces to come up with a pulmonary ventilator that can be used by hospitals as a vital tool when dealing with emergencies such as the current global pandemic.

The project is codenamed FI5: the letters being the initials of the Maranello brand and the research institute based in Genoa respectively, while the number indicates the number of weeks required to produce a fully functioning prototype, starting from a clean sheet.

FI5 is just one in a series of initiatives set up by Ferrari and IIT. Over the past few weeks, Ferrari has launched various corona virus health care projects, including direct financial support for the Modena area, as well as the production of valves for pulmonary respirators and fittings for protective masks.

FI5 has been designed to meet the typical demands of medium intensive care. Ferrari says the machine will be reliable, versatile, easy to use and assemble. It will also be able to optimise oxygen consumption and being produced in volume, using easily available materials, it will have a far lower cost than currently available pulmonary ventilators.

The technical specification of FI5, the drawings, the firmware, software and list of components are now available as an open source project, which means anyone can produce it. In fact, some Italian, Mexican and United States companies have already contacted Ferrari and IIT to move on to certifying and distributing the product.

There were five phases to the project, from design to simulation to the choice and supply of components to the production and testing of the prototype. The Scuderia’s engineers did the CAD design work, to define the pneumatic and mechanical parts and dynamic simulation. IIT sourced all the materials and designed the electronics, the firmware and the control software, also playing its part in the simulation, development and design of the wiring system and also made use of the Scuderia’s supply chain.