Project

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28 I/O system design for the PSYONIC Advanced Bionic Hand
Texas Intruments' Best Use of Texas Instruments Hardware Award
 Byron Hopps
Wenjun Sun
 Zipeng Wang design_document0.pdf
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PSYONIC is a startup on campus that is developing an affordable prosthetic hand for people with upper-limb amputations worldwide. Their prototypes have reached a high level of functionality, and they are now moving the design towards production hardware. While the core functionality of the hand is well-integrated, auxiliary functionality such as battery charging and external I/O are either nonexistent or require specialized hardware to be used.

We propose designing a new PCB for PSYONIC’s prosthetic hand, to be known as the I/O board. This board will integrate all the external I/O necessary for the prosthetic arm. It will contain two external interfaces, namely USB type-C and Bluetooth. USB type-C allows for rapid battery charging and wired data communications. Bluetooth enables the hand to be capable of wireless data transfer. These interfaces will let us build an API that will let us, and more importantly, clinicians perform a variety of remote control and configuration tasks. This includes the ability to query and write values that control various aspects of the hand’s operation, such as the finger speed sensitivity or the battery charge level. While there are COTS solutions for individual aspects of this problem, there is no commercially available solution that can perform all the required functionality, let alone in the space constraints the project requires.

Successful implementation of this project will involve accomplishing four major goals. First, the I/O board will contain four major circuit blocks: A USB-PD controller, which controls a USB power source which can be used to charge the hand's batteries; a lithium-ion battery charger and voltage regulator; a Bluetooth-enabled microcontroller, which communicates with external devices and sends commands to the hand itself; and a USB serial interface controller, which enables the microcontroller to communicate with a USB host. Second, the project will also require an additional interface on the electromyography (EMG) board to communicate with the I/O board, which might require updating the EMG board. Third, this project will require us to develop software to manage the Bluetooth and USB interfaces and pass commands to the EMG board. Lastly, we will need to modify the EMG board software to accept commands from the I/O board.

The Marching Band Assistant

Wynter Chen, Alyssa Louise Licudine, Prashant Shankar

The Marching Band Assistant

Featured Project

NetID/Names

wynterc2 (Wynter Chen), alyssal3 (Alyssa Licudine), shankar7 (Prashant Shankar)

Problem

Drum majors lead and conduct marching bands. One of their main jobs is to maintain tempo for the musicians by moving their hands in specific patterns. However, many drum majors, especially high school students, need to learn how to conduct specific tempos off the top of their head and maintain a consistent tempo without assistance for performances. Even those with musical experience have difficulty knowing for certain what tempo they're conducting without a metronome.

Solution Overview

Our project consists of an arm attachment that aids drum major conducting. The attachment contains an accelerometer that helps determine the tempo in beats per minute via hand movement. A display shows the beats per minute, which allows the drum major to adjust their speed as necessary in real time. The microcontroller data is wirelessly transmitted, and a program can be downloaded that not only visualizes the data in real-time, but provides an option to save recorded data for later. There is also a convenient charging port for the device.

This project is a unique invention that aims to help marching bands. There have been previous projects and inventions that have also digitized the conducting experience, such as the Digital Conducting Baton from Spring 2015. However, these have been in the form of a baton rather than a glove, and are used to alter music files as opposed to providing feedback. Additionally, orchestra conductors use very delicate motions with a baton, while drum majors create large, sharper motions with their arms; thus, we believed that an arm attachment was better suited for marching band usage. Unlike other applications that only integrate digital instruments, this project seeks to assist live performers.

Link to RFA: https://courses.grainger.illinois.edu/ece445/pace/view-topic.asp?id=37939

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