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Eric Earley, a biomedical engineering PhD candidate at Northwestern University who completed his research at The Regeinstein Foundation Center for Bionic Medicine, successfully defended his doctoral thesis, “Sensory Substitution in the Presence of Vision: Providing Joint Speed Feedback to Improve Myoelectric Prosthesis Control and Adaptation.”
Eric studied how well human vision estimates different aspects of biomimetic movements, such as joint speeds in stationary and moving reference frames. Through a series of experiments, he found that distal joint speed measured relative to proximal joints (for example, elbow speed in relation to a moving shoulder) is perceived with high uncertainty. He then developed a sensory substitution system using audio feedback to supplement vision and reduce this joint speed uncertainty. His research demonstrated that compared to persons with limb loss, subjects without amputation achieved lower baseline errors when the dynamics of the arm were perturbed if provided joint speed feedback. This research suggests that the availability and precision of intact senses is a crucial factor when developing sensory feedback for prosthetic arms. (Text adapted from Dr. Earley's thesis).
Eric was mentored by Drs. Levi Hargrove, PhD, Sandro Mussaivaldi, PhD, Eric Perreault, PhD, and Jon Sensinger, PhD. Congratulations, Dr. Earley!
Related Publications
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Earley EJ, Hargrove LJ. Modeling Expected Reaching Error and Behaviors for Motor Adaptation. In 2019 41st Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC) 2019 Jul 23 (pp. 1534-1538). IEEE.
Earley EJ, Johnson RE, Hargrove LJ, Sensinger JW. Joint speed discrimination and augmentation for prosthesis feedback. Scientific reports. 2018 Dec 10;8(1):1-9.
Earley EJ, Kaveny KJ, Johnson RE, Hargrove LJ, Sensinger JW. Joint-based velocity feedback to virtual limb dynamic perturbations. In 2017 International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR) 2017 Jul 17 (pp. 1313-1318). IEEE.