Steve DeWeerth and Lena Ting, faculty members in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, are working to create better control of legged robots and human prostheses using biological inspiration. Their research centers on better understanding how the nervous system communicates with joints and muscles for movement and balance and then designing systems that closely replicate the naturally fluid movement of animals and humans. The research group's goal is to help build robots with better mobility and prosthetics with natural movement more similar to a real limb.
One experiment involves a small robot that closely replicates the balance and movement of a cat to help the team determine how the body communicates to joints and muscles to help withstand sudden jolts or changes in footing. The little robot takes bumps and ground shakes while researchers gather data on how it avoids falling and what kind of pressures trigger a loss of balance.
Another project combines a real frog's muscle with a virtual robotic leg. Force impulses simulating an outside stimulus (such as a sudden bump) are sent to the frog muscle by a computer and motor. The muscle then sends a signal back to the computer, and the virtual model translates the reaction. The biological/computer fusion creates an electrical and mechanical information loop that provides researchers with a better idea of how the muscle reacts to certain mechanical stimuli.
And in research that could lead to novel strategies for tissue engineering, repair an
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Contact: Megan McRainey
megan.mcrainey@icpa.gatech.edu
404-894-6016
Georgia Institute of Technology
15-May-2006