The project will centre on instrumentation for studying mechanisms of sensory-motor control, as applied to human movement and neurological foundations of balance. The goal is to create an integrated, system that will detect, fuse, and transmit sensor data from foot contact force, muscle action, and motion for pervasive monitoring, diagnostic assessment, and treatment of patients with neurological and/or movement dysfunction. Technology innovation in this project will leverage work from the Imperial-McLaren team in:

• Wearable motion tracking: We have developed a range of MARG (Magnetic, Angular Rate, and Gravity) sensor packages and algorithms whose computational efficiency enables use at low power, facilitating integration into the diverse sensor suites targeted in this project
• Pervasive muscle recording: Our team has developed a new sensor for muscle activity for use outside clinical environs; this will be integrated into balance monitoring system in this project.
• Force profile sensing: We have developed a sensor ‘sheet’ capable of force measurement within clothing, shoes and orthotics. Smart materials are used to create a grid of pressure sensitive areas which can be embedded into a cloth or orthotic liner which will be used to correlate contact forces with balance.
• Biomedical Signal Fusion: This project will extend models we have developed in signal processing to fuse information from multimodal physiological signals from the integrated suite.

Student

James Clarke

Supervisors

Ravi Vaidyanathan (Mechanical Engineering)
Alison McGregor (Surgery & Cancer)

Industrial Advisors

Rob Hart (McLaren Applied Technologies)
Caroline Hargrove (McLaren Applied Technologies)