Engineering to enhance human mobility, play, and exploration
The Ability & Innovation Lab took a trip to Seattle Pacific University this morning to meet up with Adam Arabian’s lab. Both teams share a passion for open-source, 3D printed prosthetic and orthotic devices and discussed future potential collaborations.
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Today we hosted a prototyping challenge at the CoMotion Makerspace with some of our partners from Seattle Pacific University. The focus of today’s challenge was to both introduce our new lab members to low-resolution prototyping and improve the design of our affordable hand exoskeleton for individuals with impaired hand function.
The challenge:
Individuals who have had a stroke or neurologic injury commonly lose the ability to open their hand. Physical and occupational therapy are the most common treatments and can lead to improvements in hand function with prolonged, focused practice. Exoskeletons and other robotic technology has been introduced, but these systems are typically expensive, bulky, and can only be used in the clinical environment. In this prototyping challenge, you will build and test low-resolution prototypes to explore how we might safely, comfortable, and affordably help to open the hand for individuals with neurologic disorders.
The group came up with some great ideas and designs (and some spectacular failures with important lessons). If you would like to try this prototyping challenge yourself, grab some prototyping supplies and work through our GUIDE.
Dr. Steele has been selected as one of five finalists for the 
David Winter Young Investigator Award at the International Society of Biomechanics. She will be presenting in the award session on Wednesday, July 15th at the conference in Glasgow. She will be presenting the results of her research on:
Altered muscle synergies during gait in cerebral palsy are not due to altered kinematics or kinetics.
We’ve had two film crews visiting the lab over the past week. The students did a great job describing their work and its relevance to health and human ability. We also enjoyed playing with all of the fantastic camera equipment!
The lab went mini-golfing to celebrate Cuong’s graduation. Cuong has been an undergraduate researcher in the lab for the past year developing a system to evaluate hand function with depth cameras in partnership with Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare. He has done a fantastic job developing GUIs for capturing data and deploying the cameras into the clinical setting. Cuong will be joining Phillip’s Ultrasound Division. Best of luck Cuong – you will be missed in the lab!
As for mini-golf, we need some more practice. Ben Shuman and Lauren Sepp (with two holes in one and an assist) were the winners!
Ability & Innovation Lab 2015 Putt-Putt
