Thesis Project Form

Providing artificial sensory feedback is a hot topic in prosthetics right now, and most studies approach this challenge heuristically by developing a specific technique and testing its effectiveness. However, the results are inconsistent as some methods prove to be ineffective whereas some others are beneficial, but there is no framework that enables understanding the reasons for success and/or failure.

The general objective is to develop a principled approach that will allow explaining as well as predicting the behavior of a prosthesis user while they control the prosthesis equipped with artificial
feedback.
To this aim, the trainee will use a combination of experiments on human control of a prosthetic hand and methods of computational neuroscience (optimal control, sensor fusion and estimation) to simulate user prosthesis control with uncertainty in the feedback and
control loop.

The trainee will read the literature and formulate the model.
After that, he will design an experimental protocol and collect the data in able-bodied and potentially amputee subjects controlling a
myoelectric prosthesis.
The collected data will be used to assess the validity of the developed model.
The methods and results will be reported in a project report.