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Hi Everyone and Happy New Year!

Thanks for all of your emails asking me about my work! I’m grateful for your interest and also realize I could do a better job of explaining the rat prosthetic research I am working on. The work, which my lab is undertaking with the collaboration of a Muscle Physiology Research Lab at U of M has to do with the use of a smart polymer that has been developed by that lab, made to nurture and collect signals from severed nerve ends long-term. Where my work comes in is taking the information being collected from that polymer coated nerve and processing it with the purpose of re-creating accurate high fidelity limb movements. So here is a visual essay of my work thus far on this project. The first two images and movie are abit graphic, I apologize for that, and hope they don’t put you off…

Anyway here goes!

Here’s what the rat’s leg does when a stimulation signal is provided.

(Click to see Movie)

I can replicate this motion with an artificial rat leg I designed and built.

(Click to see Movie)

… or use non-invasive surface EMG data from my flexing arm to make the leg move …

(Click to see Movie)

Thanks for reading and more to come soon!