Cardiovascular hydrodynamic systems, such as pulse duplicators, reproduce the
human systemic circulation and they play a pivotal role as in vitro assessment tools
for testing heart medical devices such as aortic valves and stents [1]. Hence, spe-
cific ISO standards govern their safety assessment, prescribing in vitro experiments
aimed at replicating the target operating conditions in humans [2]. In this scenario,
the modernization of existing mock circulatory loops, in terms of both hardware and
software components, offers new possibilities to dominate their intrinsic complexity,
through the rapid exploration of new suitable solutions. This research involves the
modernization of an existing non-commercial pulse duplicator in use at the Heal-
ing Research Laboratory at the University of Padua, Italy [3]. The cardiovascular
hydrodynamic system is characterized by high customizability, modularity, and it
allows simulating a wide range of physiological and pathologic conditions. The focus
of this research is the automation of a crucial system component that is the periph-
eral resistance device, aggregating the system effects of resistance to flow providing
a suitable pressure drop. To this aim, a new motorized peripheral resistance valve,
equipped with a stepper DC motor, a H-bridge, and Arduino Uno board, replaces
the current manual device. Specifically, the problem of valve automatic setting ad-
justment is tackled in a data-driven way by means of an Extremum Seeking Control
algorithm exhibiting interesting plug and play characteristics. The proposed ap-
proach can handle the intrinsic system complexity to fix the incomplete knowledge
of certain system characteristics while guaranteeing good performance in a wide
range of system configurations and operating conditions. The effectiveness of the
automated peripheral resistance device has been verified through experimental tests
and the automation of other fundamental system components will be considered in
the future
