Wearable Control Interfaces

This project began as an exploration of alternative computer input systems, motivated by a friend's struggle with carpal tunnel syndrome and my growing concern about the long-term ergonomic compromises inherent in traditional interface design. Rather than accepting incremental improvements to existing devices, I questioned why society remains locked into single iterations of input methods when humans demonstrate remarkable adaptability in learning complex motor skills. This led me to deliberately abandon intuitive design principles and seek applications where users would be motivated to invest in mastering sophisticated control systems.

The robotic prosthetics industry presented an ideal challenge, where current interfaces rely on binary electrode pairs providing only basic proportional control. I developed a complete prosthetic hand system from the ground up and created three distinct wearable control interfaces: a mouth guard utilizing tongue position, sound, and lip pressure; an ankle-mounted system combining motion sensing with computer vision toe tracking; and a head-mounted eye tracker detecting temple muscle tension and eye blink patterns.

This project required expanding my expertise across mechanical engineering, embedded systems programming, and neural network implementation while collaborating with the awesome people at the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital.