NSF Directorate for Engineering | Division of

1. NSF Directorate for Engineering | Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (CBET) Bioengineering and Engineering Healthcare Cluster Research to Aid Persons with Disabilities Program Director - Ted A. Conway - tconway@nsf.gov Research Areas of Support Research Areas of Particular Recent Interest Examples of Recent Projects 1

2. Research Areas of Support and of Particular Recent Interest • RAPD supports research that will lead to the • development of new technologies, devices, or • software for persons with disabilities. This includes: •  The characterization, restoration, and/or • substitution of human functional ability or cognition • The interaction of persons with disabilities • and their environment • Areas of particular recent interest are: • Disability-related research in neuroscience • and/or neuroengineering • Rehabilitation robotics 2

3. Funding FY 2009 Description Unsolicited New Awards CAREER Undergraduate Design Projects Research Supplements Total New Program Awards # of Awards 11 3 8 7 29 Total Dollars $2,857,000 $1,292,000 $1,079,000 $202,000 $5,430,000 3

4. Recreational Technology for Persons with Disabilities Karen May-Newman - San Diego State University Undergraduate students in mechanical engineering designed and built equipment to make a racing yacht usable by a crew of five individuals with disabilities and a non-disabled captain. The yacht placed 4th in class in the 2005 Transpac Race from Los Angeles to Hawaii. 4

5. Artificial Retina Slide 1 of 2 Dr. Mark Humayun, Director of the Engineering Research Center for Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems, and his research group have developed a prosthetic device that enables previously blind people to perceive light and patterns. 5

6. Artificial Retina Results Slide 2 of 2 Image of a kitchen scene, 1024 x 1024 pixels. Square pixellated image of a kitchen scene, 25 x 25 pixels with 34% Gaussian blur, showing object recognition. Credit: Armand R. Tanguay, Jr. and Noelle R. B. Stiles; University of Southern California 6

7. Post-Stroke Mobility Rehabilitation Greg Burdea - Rutgers University While still in the early stages of research, a new technique to lower the cost of rehabilitation and allow it to be delivered in a home setting could have a profound impact on people recovering from stroke. This project includes work on Virtual Reality-based Dual Haptic Platforms. These platforms are being developed to deliver rehabilitation in the home. 7

8. Towards a Neuroprosthetic Hand Slide 1 of 2 Kenneth Horch - University of Utah Background:  Body powered and myoelectric systems (systems controlled by electrical signals from the body) are the most widely employed techniques for controlling upper limb prostheses.  One of the shortcomings with these systems is the lack of  feedback on reach and grasp movements.  Recently, Horch’s group at Utah has shown that localized electrical stimulation of nerve stumps in amputees can produce sensations of touch and joint movement referred to the missing hand, thus providing pseudo-natural sensory feedback. Coupled with a prosthetic hand equipped with appropriate sensors and a control algorithm that makes the hand respond more like a natural hand, this could provide the basis for an artificial arm and hand that is better incorporated into the amputee’s body image and provides better function. The goals of the present NSF-funded activity are: 1)  to further develop the electrode technology 2)  to optimize the processing of the sensory information being provided through nerve stimulation 3)  to create an improved control system for operating the prosthetic hand 8 CBET-BES-0457193

9. Towards a Neuroprosthetic Hand Slide 2 of 2 Kenneth Horch - University of Utah Results:  A sophisticated control algorithm has been developed that uses feedback from a force sensor and a position sensor in the gripper (fingers) of Motion Control’s new artificial hand to overcome mechanical deficiencies in the device, such as the large “deadband” present when initiating a movement, and to provide a smooth transition between position/velocity control (i.e., when opening or closing the gripper) and force/impedance control (i.e., when grasping an object).  A new, simplified procedure for implanting and interfacing with the electrodes has been devised.  This has set the stage for experiments with human subjects of greater depth and duration than had been possible in the earlier work. Motion Control hand with cosmetic glove removed, as used in the development project for a Neuroprosthetic Hand. (Motion Control, Inc. Salt Lake City, Utah) Credit: Erik Engeberg, University of Utah CBET-BES-0457193 9

10. CAREER: Signal Processing Technology for Cochlear Implants Slide 1 of 2 CBET-BES-0447705 Alireza Ziarini - Clarkson University Background: A cochlear implant is an electronic device that helps to provide a sense of sound to a person of profound deafness or sever hearing impairment.  It consists of an external module that sits behind the ear and an internal module that is surgically implanted beneath the skin on the skull.  The external module has: 1) a microphone that converts the environmental sound into electrical signals, 2) a speech processor that processes the sound and creates the right signal for transmission to the internal module, and 3) a transmitter that relays the processed signal through the skin and to the receiver in the form of electromagnetic waves. Aside from the receiver that picks up the electromagnetic waves, the internal module has an electrode array that directly stimulates the auditory nerve fibers, thereby bypassing the dysfunctional cochlea. While cochlear implants do not restore normal hearing, they are widely used as the most viable prosthetic substitute for hearing.  It is estimated that about 150,000 people use cochlear implants worldwide, American users constituting nearly one- third of them.  A key component of a cochlear implant is its speech processor that determines how the electrodes should be stimulated for best possible performance. 10

11. CAREER: Signal Processing Technology for Cochlear Implants Slide 2 of 2 CBET-BES-0447705 Alireza Ziarini - Clarkson University Results: Despite significant technological advances made in recent years in the hardware components of cochlear implants, the underlying speech processing algorithms have remained pretty basic, mostly formed on the basis of conventional Fourier analysis in one way or another.  In currently used cochlear implant devices, only the amplitude modulations from a speech signal are used for presenting the signal via the implant to the brain.  Research has been going on in the field of cochlear implant speech processing with regards to extracting frequency information from speech for improved speech recognition.  At their core, such algorithms provide a means of decomposing a complex signal that is speech into a number of simpler components and estimating their frequencies over time. Scientific Uniqueness:  This research addresses the technical challenges of cochlear implant technology at its core.  Unlike the currently used speech processing technology that fails to accurately model the complexity of speech, in the developed technology speech is modeled in it full complexity providing high-resolution estimates of instantaneous frequency and amplitude of components that are used to stimulate the electrodes.  This precision results in an improved recognition of the sounds and offers significant advantages to the user in terms of sound quality. 11