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Projects-Selected Research Activities

A Neuroprostetic Device To Control Postural

Equilibrium In Spinal-Cord Injured Dogs

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In this work we look at how to help dogs like poor Lilly, who has a

 spinal chord injury.  First, we built our own Dancin'Dog , in order to develop and test walking gaits.  We use sensors to allow us to provide HipBalancing for the dog. Finally, we will install electrical sensors in order to implement this in a biological specimen.

  1. Taghavi, N. Luecke, G.R., Jeffery, N.D. "A Technical Review on Development of an Advanced Electro-Mechanical System." Computers , 9, 19, https://doi.org/10.3390/computers9010019

  2. Taghavi, N. Luecke, G.R., Jeffery, N.D. "A Neuro-Prosthetic Device for
    Substituting Sensory Functions during Stance Phase of the Gait", , 2019, 9, 5144; doi:10.3390/app9235144, www.mdpi.com/journal/applsci

  3. Taghavi, N. Luecke, G.R., Jeffery, N.D., “A Review on Electromechanical Methods and Devices for Neural Rehabilitation”, , 1(1): pp1-4, August 2018.

  4. Taghavi, N., Luecke, G.R., Jeffery, N.D."A Wearable Body Controlling Device for Application of Functional Electrical Stimulation." Sensors 2018, 18(4), 1251; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18041251

Large Scale Haptics

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The use of haptic devices in an immersive environment has been widely accepted as increasing the immersive experience of a user in a virtual environment. In this work we place a commonly used, commercial haptic device on a planar mobile base to expand the useable workspace, and explore the fidelity of virtual forces as the human interacts with the environment.  Experimental results show that the transparency and effective environmental impedance is governed by the characteristics of the commercial device and is not appreciably affected by motion of the base during contact with the environment.

  1. Pavlik, R.A., Vance, J.M., and Luecke, G.R., "Interacting with a Large Virtual Environment by Combining a Ground-based Haptic Device and a Mobile Robot Base", Proceedings of the ASME 2013 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, IDETC/CIE 2013, August 4-7, 2013, Portland, Oregon, USA.

Harvest Combine Simulator

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A harvesting combine simulator with virtual reality interface is currently in the human testing stage to validate new technology and assess acceptance, usefulness and operational interactions.

  1. Pavlik, R.A., Vance, J.M., and Luecke, G.R., "Interacting with a Large Virtual Environment by Combining a Ground-based Haptic Device and a Mobile Robot Base", Proceedings of the ASME 2013 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, IDETC/CIE 2013, August 4-7, 2013, Portland, Oregon, USA.

Inertial Stabilization and Navigation

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Tracking a target from a moving platform is a problem that has relevance in military, aviation, and space applications.  We develop a method for tracking a target using a platform-based antenna.  We use the steepest descent gradient direction to minimize the value of a cost function to obtain optimal performance of the system in real time.

  1. Luecke, G. R. "Real Time Gradient Descent Closed Loop Control" Proceedings of IASTED International Conference on Modeling, Identification, and Control, Feb 19-22, 2001, Innsbruck, Austria, pg 976-981.

Design, Development, and Testing of an Automatic Window Shade Controller

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We design an active window shade to control the direct solar gain through a window.  Using simple actuation hardware and sensors, a control strategy is presented that automatically adjusts window shades to save HVAC energy by controlling direct solar radiation passing through a window

  1. Luecke, G. R. and J. Slaughter, "Design, Development and Testing of an Automated Window Shade Controller, Journal of Solar Engineering, Vol.  117, November 1995, pg.  326-332. (2)

  2. U.S. Patent Number 5,675,487, October 7, 1997.                              Patterson, J., and Luecke, G. R. "System for Controlling Energy Through Windows"

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