Research Highlights

The Mobility Enhancement roBotic (MEBot) wheelchair was developed to improve the safety and accessibility of wheelchair users when facing architectural barriers. MEBot uses pneumatic actuators attached to its frame and six wheels to provide curb ascending/descending for heights up to 20.3 cm.

Neuroprosthesis enables the brain control on the external devices purely using neural activity for paralyzed people. Supervised learning decoders recalibrate or re-fit the discrepancy between the desired target and decoder’s output, where the correction may over-dominate the user’s intention.

Multi-channel nerve cuff electrode arrays can provide sensory feedback to prosthesis users. To develop efficacious stimulation protocols, an understanding of the impact that spatio-temporal patterned stimulation can have on the response of sensory fibers is crucial.

Although various treatment methods have been investigated to reduce spasticity and intoeing gait in children with cerebral palsy (CP), methods to concurrently reduce an intoeing gait and associated ankle/knee stiffness and spasticity according to a child’s specific needs are lacking. This study aimed to develop a training program to improve walking function and transverse-plane (pivoting) neuromuscular control and reduce spasticity and intoeing gait deviations.

The amount of research on developing exoskeletons for human gait assistance has been growing in the recent years. However, the control design of exoskeletons for assisting human walking remains unclear.

Implantable microsystems that collect and transmit neural data are becoming very useful entities in the field of neuroscience. Limited by high data rates, on-chip compression is often required to transmit the recorded data without causing power dissipation at levels that would damage sensitive brain tissue.

This paper aims to develop a knowledge base and identify the promising research pathways toward designing lower limb prostheses for optimal biomechanical and clinical outcomes.

Variations in biofeedback coding schemes for postural control, in recent research, have shown significant differences in performance outcomes due to variations in coding schemes.

Knowledge of human–exoskeleton interaction forces is crucial to assess user comfort and effectiveness of the interaction. The subject-exoskeleton collaborative movement and its interaction forces can be predicted in silico using computational modeling techniques.

There has been increased effort to understand the neurophysiological effects of concussion aimed to move diagnosis and identification beyond current subjective behavioral assessments that suffer from poor sensitivity. Recent evidence suggests that event-related potentials (ERPs) measured with electroencephalography (EEG) are persistent neurophysiological markers of past concussions.