Research Interests

I am interested in Neural Prosthetics development, and my research involves the brain processes that contribute to volitional movement. Our lab explores the possibility of controlling a robotic hand prosthesis that is controlled by motor cortex activity. The neural activity is recorded by chronically implemented electrodes in the motor cortex.

That activity is decoded, and a desired velocity command is produced and sent to the robot arm. Our current algorithm produces a new command every 30ms, and uses the Population Vector method to decode the neural activity.

We are currently able to control the end point of a 3 DOF robotic hand, and we are working on expanding that to include a gripper, and further down the way a robotic hand.