Principal Investigator Hugh Herr
As our exoskeletons become more powerful, safety is an increasingly important factor in our research process. Your main objective will be to evaluate our data collection systems, perform a risk analysis, design a risk mitigation strategy, and implement parts of that strategy. This implementation will require some electrical engineering work and some basic mechanical design/fabrication. Solutions could potentially be useful to other research groups in this field.
Currently, we use motion capturing cameras, force plate equipped treadmills, and COSMED CO2 instruments to record human metabolic rate and walking dynamics. This data is used to train computer simulations of walking and to analyze controllers for existing exoskeletons. As part of your UROP, you will learn how to run our motion capture system and will assist in research with human subjects.