Welcome!

Welcome to My Blog

                                 

Hello!  My Name is Srihari Iyer. You can call me, Sri, or Srihari, either one, you choose. What you’ve stumbled upon in the expanse of the Internet, is my blog for my senior research project. As of now, there’s nothing, but I will be updating this blog every week to talk about my experiences and what I learned about the ever-growing field of Prosthetics.

I am a senior at Basis Scottsdale high school. In 5th grade, I began a whole new part of my life, learning more about every subject with excellent teachers who brought an enriching, charismatic approach to my education. As the years went by, I wanted to pursue my interests in the real world and apply what I learned in the real world. I will do this with the Senior Research Project program, that you can read about here.

In my spare time, I enjoy reading articles about new technology, watching movies, and all things politics-related. A week really doesn't go by without a couple hours of binge-watching the Daily Show, Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert and SNL on Youtube. I really like superheros, partially due to the fact that I would always watch Teen Titans and Justice League as a child, and this lead to an interest in film-making with the amount of superhero movies coming out.

Technology is something that always intrigued me. It literally shows the advancement of mankind. Cellphones today are over a 100,000 times more powerful than what the Apollo 11 used to land on the moon. Cars can drive on their own. People like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Ginni Rometty, and the massive tech-companies they managed, all became inspirations for me. Not just because they were like real-life versions of Tony Stark(Iron Man) or Bruce Wayne(Batman), but because they had managed these vehicles for innovation and advancement.

Biomedical Engineering and biotechnology particularly interested me because it was the combination of biology, chemistry and technology. These fields used the subjects I love to solve medical and environmental problems. Prosthetics are the solution for amputees or physcial impairment. I began with a small internship over the summer at this lab, guided by Dr. Marco Santello and Dr. Qiushi Fu, both phenominal and fantastic people; and I decided I wanted to pursue more at their lab. There has been much advancement in the field of Prosthetics, but not much in terms of design. Through my project, I want to observe and analyze the Prosthetic Hand and its design. I want to find ways that I can make it better.

Final Post

Well, That's a Wrap! I have attached my final presentation to this post. Thank you so much for all of the support and a special thanks to those of you who attended the presentations yesterday!

Click Here for my presentation.

Week 10

Hello World!

Well, here we are, Week 10! The ultimate week to my srp!

This was the last week I spent on site, and this week was really laid back, I just had to graph out a bunch of 3-D mesh plots and then I was able to finish my final presentation.

As I worked through my presentation, I reminisced about everything that I had learned. It was a really great experience. I learned so much, about the technical side of prosthetic development, and the movement of the prosthetic. I actually got to use a prosthetic, and learned the frustrating reality of its capabilities

Also as a bit of clarification, I am going to take some time to properly explain the main error I encountered during this project. So, when grabbing an object in this experiment, and with things in real life, your fingers curl in. When doing so with the motion sensors, the motion cameras around me, as seen in the picture to the right, didn't pick up data. 

So then along with that, my final presentation came as the final culmination of this entire project. Although I did procrastinate and watch a couple of videos on Youtube, I was able to mostly stay on track and finish up my presentation. It was interesting when compiling the social attitudes, because I went in depth on different societies, but as an overarching analysis, I saw how with the Industrial Revolution, and more manual jobs, the increasing near for prosthetic functionality increased. Earlier with societies, such as Egypt or Greece, and even in the middle ages, prosthetics centered around cosmetic appearance. That was just something neat that I noticed.

As for my final product, I still am trying to decide what to do, so if you have any suggestions, please include them in the comments section. 

Yeah, and that's a wrap! Thank you all for reading! 

Week 9

Hello World!

Almost there, second to last week! 

So this week, I had a total of 30 excel files full of 1800 or so data points, I spent almost all of this week. Thinking about it, the motion sensors picked up data every 20 milliseconds in each 6 second trial, and some of the data was incomplete because the cameras could not pick up the motion sensor. 

So I had to export the data from each of the excel files and interpolate it with a MATLAB function. I had to fill in the blanks for the data, so that I can plot the data and look at the velocities. WIth the velocities, I can analyze the movement of each of the sensors, to look at the overall motor movement of my hand and the prosthetic. 

I have to finish my presentation for the 13th, so most of my week was also spent compiling the info that I had gotten from the papers I read. It was really interesting to put all of that information in front of me and see some of the problems that I had noted. Possibly the most important knowledge I gathered was that the willingness to accept and adapt is the most important aspect for a prosthetic user. They need to accept that their life is different and they need to adapt and  learn how to live their lives as close to how it was before. They need to also accept that having a prosthetic makes them nothing less than everyone else. And to make this transition easier, is what I hope to help with my research. 

So that was my second to last week, it was fun, just compiling the info and data, which I will be analyzing soon. As usual, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments below. Thank you!

Week 8

Hello World!

Week 8, home stretch here I come! 

So, this week was off to an excellent start, I started by reinstalling MATLAB after my computer stopped working, and then realized that I needed to get some work done on the paper end, by looking through some papers of social stigmas. This week literally sped by fast and was a whirlwind of information that I am still recovering from. 

After reinstalling MATLAB, I decided to take a look at the data I got. The only problem was that there was some uncertainty in the data that I had obtained. I needed to go through the notepad files and then export them to excel, which was a simple by very time-consuming activity. After doing that, I renamed all of the files by the trial number and the object that I was interacting with. Basically each of these files had the x,y,and z values for the motion sensors attached to the thumb, index,middle, and ring fingers, the pinky, and one on the palm. I had this data for the movement that my hand and the prosthetic did when grasping the object. I organized and sorted all of my data out into excel files and made sure I had everything I needed.

But the thing is that all of these time-consuming tasks are really hard. I may just give up. On second thought, this is probably my last post for this project since I am quitting. See Ya!









....

  APRIL FOOL'S!

Yeah, no I am not quitting, just felt like including that in for the sake of mentioning that it is already April! 

So back to what I was saying, with the data, I am going to be running it through MATLAB with a function to interpolate it. Essentially, what I will be doing is use a function to plot the data, and fill in any gaps with logical data given the other data. After I interpolate the data, I will begin with the next part of the analysis! If you guys need a better explanation, just ask away in the comments below. See you all next week! 
**EDIT-It won't allow me to post gifs, sorry about that**

Week 7

Hello World!

So, last week was quite eye-opening and indicated a shift. Change is good, and in this case, it worked out well, I was able to use the prosthetic and I obtained data!

I realized that I may not have explained it that well, so as a quick summary of the new methodology for what I did, I began with my hand and the prosthetic device. I started out with three objects, a box, a cylinder, a baseball, and a roll of tape, all seen below.

Most everyday objects that one would encounter,
along with a baseball for spring training 

Then Dr. Fu and I attached motion trackers to my hand, one on each finger and one on my palm. Then with a motion tracking software, I used my hand grasped the objects, lifting them up briefly, before placing them back down. This was to see and obtain data as to how I naturally approached the object with my hand. As a test,  I used the hand, and just moved it around with motion sensors to make sure the sensors around me could pick up all of the trackers.

I then had a prosthetic hand attached to me. The Softhand pro device is actually quite heavy, and the one I used also had a silicone, soft rubber cover on it. I used it in this elaborate setup where it was attached to a rig made of pvc pipe and a stand, with the same module that it would use to attach to an amputee. It was then secured to me with some velcro. In the picture below, the hand has the motion trackers taped on, and it is attached to my hand. You can not see it, but there are two surface EMG sensors that are attached to my forearm. The white thing that I am holding onto is not a joystick, it is just something to hold onto, and when I move my wrist, I can manipulate the prosthetic.

Then I used the prosthetic and lifted the objects, and obtained the motion data for the different objects, doing three trials for each object, for both my hand and the prosthetic. 

This was also a valuable experience because I learned how hard it is to use the prosthetic. Sometimes the prosthetic does not register your EMG's so it is just a deadweight dragging down your arm. For me, the biggest problem was picking up things, like I played around with it, making my own small game of jenga with objects around the lab, and it was really hard to use. I think picking up the roll of tape was the most frustrating thing every, because, every time I grabbed for it, it slipped through the palm of the hand. 

Well, so that was the experimentation in my project. I used the prosthetic, and I got some real experience with the short comings of the prosthetic device. I mean, I only spent a couple hours with it, and to imagine Amputees look to their prosthetics with hope, and they use it for the rest of their lives, that is a great feat of strength. Thank you for reading. I have a lot more footage of my trials, but most of that is under wraps because it will go into my final project presentation. Don't forget to leave any comments below and share your thoughts on this week. See you all next week!

Week 6

Hello World!

I am back this week with some ground breaking news! So my project has culminated itself in a very different way now. What I was going to do was get EMG Data from my hand, and analyze the forces in play with simulations. Well there is good news and bad news...

So for my project, I was planing on using EMG's and getting Force data from the simulations, but the social aspect and the analysis of social attitudes seen in various papers are interesting me. With the simulations, it would have taken far too much time, and that would mean I could not get enought data. So that is not going to work out. That was the bad news. 

Now for the good news! So my new methodology is more straight forward than what I was planning to do. For the new experiment, I will be analyzing the same motor function of grasping, but the slight difference comes in the way it will be observed. I will be using the prosthetic and controlling it with my EMG's. The same EMG's I would put into moving my hand, I would use to move the prosthetic, and that would be done using an EMG sensor and a separate program to translate the EMG's to the prosthetic. I hope that makes sense so far. 

Now with three different objects, I would use my EMG's to run the prosthetic and my hand, and grasp the object. With a primary recording of my muscle movement, with a myograph of when I clench my fist, and grasp the objects, I would see if the hand can replicate the movement using the same EMG's.

So this week was essentially my first main trial and error, and it showed me that what I was doing was on a scale unlike the nature of this project. I wanted to do a lot in an amount of time, that I cannot really do. Other than those important developments, I will continue to look through papers, and I will be doing a mid-week update for week 7 about the paper I am currently reading through.

I hope all of that makes sense. I will answer any questions in detail in the comments below and in my mid-week update. Thank you!