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Stevens Institute of Technology's Ramana Vinjamuri, Stevens Institute of Technology, has received the CAREER Award 2019, which will bring him nearly $ 500,000 over five years, from the National Science Foundation to understand how the brain controls perhaps one of the best robots in the world: the human hand.
"The human hand operates in 37 different dimensions to perform effortless movements, from the most basic to the most refined," said Vinjamuri, badistant professor at Stevens' Schaefer School of Engineering. "And no one can replace him."
But in his research on humans, Vinjamuri is trying to get closer to creating robotic exoskeletons that can mimic the real hand for people with paralysis, and extend these models to control human interfaces. -machine, which should play a major role. role in prosthetics and rehabilitation in the years to come.
The CAREER Award helps beginning-of-career teachers who stand out as leaders and role models in their respective fields.
"Currently, exoskeletons on the market can only offer basic functionality such as grab or pinch," said Vinjamuri. "We are trying to implement new designs of control mechanisms with an almost natural movement for people with disabilities, so that they can improve their ability to perform their daily tasks."
Unlike a human arm, which moves only in seven dimensions, Vinjamuri and his team study the complex and high-dimensional movements of the human hand, using biomimetic control mechanisms called synergies. Each synergy is the cornerstone of the movement, and the combination of synergies results in more complex movements, similar to how the alphabet is combined to create words and phrases. He works to find out which areas of the brain control each synergy. From there, Vinjamuri hopes to provide the exoskeletons of the hands with the almost natural abilities of a human hand.
His work also has applications on cybersecurity, perhaps to unlock iPhones or other security systems. "The way you hold your iPhone is different from the one I hold," Vinjamuri said. "It's a biomimetic identity, like retinal badyzes, but it's a lot harder to hack than what's currently available on an iPhone."
Vinjamuri's achievements in this space – the decomposition of the movement of the hand into individual components – have been widely recognized. In 2010, the National Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research awarded her the Mary E. Switzer Merit Merit Scholarship. In 2016 and 2019, he received research and innovation awards from the New Jersey Health Foundation. In 2018, he was nominated for the 2018 Brain Computer Interface Award, a prize received by the world's best technology. He is a senior member of the IEEE.
In addition to Vinjamuri, Stephanie Lee has recently received the highly competitive CAREER Award for her research on the development of portable solar panels. Past recipients of the award include Samantha Kleinberg, professor of computer science, Negar Tavbadolian, professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Frank Fisher, Brendan Englot and Robert Chang, professors in mechanical engineering.
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