CAREER: Synergy-based Human Machine Interfaces

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With a brain controlled exoskeleton, an individual with spinal cord injury performed a symbolic-kickoff of for the World Cup in Brazil in 2014. Human-machine interfaces have not only become popular technologies but have become the hope of many individuals for restoring their lost limb function. Decades of research went into making the interface between the human and the machine seamless, but scientists were unable to effectively address the inherent challenges, namely, complexity, adaptability and variability. To overcome the above challenges, it is critical to computationally understand and quantitatively characterize how humans control their senses and motor abilities. Biomimetically inspired models can help to understand this process, and can enable efficient control of the machine. The human hand has many dimensions and is an ideal testbed to understand sensorimotor control while interacting with computers and other machines. Hence the goal of this project is to design and develop biomimetic models that control the human hand and extend these models to the control of multidimensional machines. The societal impacts of the proposed project will be the development of new designs of artificial limbs for individuals with disabilities that are as close to natural in their functions. The educational and outreach impacts of the project will create opportunities for students and working engineers to learn the importance of human machine interfaces. The project will facilitate mentored international research and educational opportunities for students. The hands-on modules developed as an outflow of the proposed research will ignite interest in science and technology among students at all levels, particularly women and underrepresented minorities.The means by which the central nervous system effortlessly controls the high dimensional human hand is still an unsolved mystery. To address this high dimensional control problem, many bioinspired motor control models have been proposed, one of which is based on synergies. According to this model, instead of controlling individual motor units, central nervous system simplifies the control using coordinated control of groups of motor units called synergies. However, there are several unanswered questions today. Where are synergies present? What is their role in motor control and motor learning? To answer these fundamental questions, this project takes a holistic and comprehensive approach. It combines the concepts of human motor control, computational neuroscience, machine learning and validation with noninvasive human experiments. The research objectives of this project are: to model the generation of synergies in human hand movements and validate the model with noninvasive human experiments using computational models, electroencephalography and transcranial magnetic stimulation, to model the behavior and the role of synergies in motor learning and to apply these synergies in multidimensional machine control and machine-assisted learning.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.