Research Highlights

As Featured in the New York Times: In this paper, we present a new perspective to design an unpowered exoskeleton for metabolic rate reduction in running.

We investigated alterations in material properties such as elasticity and viscoelasticity of stroke-affected muscles using ultrasound induced shear waves and mechanical models. We used acoustic radiation force to generate shear waves along fascicles of biceps muscles and measured their propagation velocity.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) increases the risk of amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and Alzheimer’s disease(AD). aMCI is the transitory stage from normal cognition to AD, which seriously impacts the quality of human life, especially for old people.

Functional electrical stimulation (FES) can be used as a neuroprosthesis in which muscles are stimulated by electrical pulses to compensate for the loss of voluntary movement control. Modulating the stimulation intensities to reliably generate movements is a challenging control problem.

The high energy cost of walking in individuals with cerebral palsy (CP) contributes significantly to reduced mobility and quality of life. The purpose of this study was to develop and clinically evaluate an untethered ankle exoskeleton with the ability to reduce the metabolic cost of walking in children and young adults with gait pathology from CP.

Decline in balance control is an issue for older adults as it leads to an increased risk of falling which may result in serious injury. Mitigating this risk may be achieved through balance training and exercise, but lack of adherence to an exercise program often occurs.

Simultaneous and proportional control (SPC) of neural-machine interfaces uses magnitudes of smoothed electromyograms (EMG) as control inputs. Though surface EMG (sEMG) electrodes are common for clinical neural-machine interfaces, intramuscular EMG (iEMG) electrodes may be indicated in some circumstances (e.g., for controlling many degrees of freedom).

Rodent models are decisive for translational research in healthy and pathological conditions of motor function thanks to specific similarities with humans. Here, we present an upgraded version of the M-Platform, a robotic device previously designed to train mice during forelimb retraction tasks.

Lower-limb amputees typically experience reduced mobility and higher metabolic rates than non-amputees. It may be possible to improve their mobility and metabolic rate with an optimized robotic prosthesis.

A mathematical modeling for description of oscillation suppression by deep brain stimulation (DBS) is explored in this work. High frequency DBS introduced to the basal ganglia network can suppress pathological neural oscillations that occur in the Parkinsonian state.