Sasha Portnova will be presenting her work, Open-Source 3D-Printed Hand Orthoses for Individuals with Spinal Cord Injury, at the American Academy of Orthotists and Prosthetists (AAOP) 42nd Academy Annual Meeting and Scientific Symposium, March 9-12th in Orlando, FL. Congratulations, Sasha!
Orthoses
Sasha Portnova to present in The International Conference of Undergraduate Research
Sasha Portnova is presenting her research on 3D-printed wrist-driven hand orthoses today in The International Conference of Undergraduate Research (ICUR). The conference is an annual multidisciplinary forum that connects students from universities in seven countries across the world. Sasha was the sole person selected from the ME department at UW to present. Great work, Sasha!
Lab featured in ME Video
The Ability & Innovation Lab was featured in the College of Engineering’s Video on mechanical engineering. Hopefully we can help to get more future engineers interested in working with the ultimate machine! Sylvie and Gaurav did a fantastic job sharing their experiences and future ambitions working as mechanical engineers.
You can watch the full video here: You Tube
Prototyping Challenge: Opening the Hand
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.
Welcome REU students!
We are welcoming three awesome undergraduate students to our lab this year. All three are participating in a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) with the NSF Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering.
- Lekha Anantuni is a rising senior in biomedical engineering from Arizona State University
- Albert Perez, Jr. is a rising sophomore in mechanical engineering from San Diego State University
- Sasha Portnova is a rising senior in mechanical engineering from UW
To introduce the crew to the lab, we had kick-off meetings today. After lunch at Aqua Verde we headed to the CSNE to an introduction and demo with electromyography (EMG) which will be critical for Lekha’s project. Later in the afternoon, our partners from Seattle Pacific University and the UW Division of Prosthetics & Orthotics stopped by for a kick-off meeting to discuss how Albert and Sasha can help to improve and test the design of open-source orthoses for individuals with impaired hand function.
For Science!