Pint of Postdoc Speaker Recap - Dr. Joao Bimbo

“Virtual Reality as a tool for upper-limb prosthesis development”

Dr. Joao Bimbo

Edited by:

Jennifer Blackburn (assisted by Aileen Fernandez)

Abstract:

Robotic technologies will enable the next generation of prosthetic devices to be more dexterous and easier to use. Development and adoption of these complex systems typically follow an iterative process of conception, implementation, user training and testing, data analysis, and system evaluation. 

For our October 2020 Pint of Postdoc series, Joao Bimbo talked about his work developing a virtual reality (VR) setup where the user can control a virtual arm and carry out a number of daily living activities, These activities represent a diverse set of actions that a person would need to perform autonomously (eating, reaching for objects on shelves, opening doors). The user wears a head-mounted display providing an “immersive” experience, and body movements are tracked by an optical motion capture system. The virtual prosthesis is controlled using buttons on a controller or surface electromyography (a procedure to detect muscle activity using electrodes placed on the skin). The arm movements in the virtual environment are a result of combining user movements and virtual prosthesis control interface inputs. Subsequent human subjects tests used the VR system to look at different wrist control conditions extracted from demonstrations of healthy subjects: no wrist, moving each joint sequentially, and moving along trajectories. Users reported a high degree of satisfaction and brought up no issues from using the VR system and the results show a lot of promise. He plans on using VR to test different prosthesis designs without having to physically build them.