July 9, 2024 Faculty Focus: Peter Adamczyk Written By: Caitlin Scott Departments: Mechanical Engineering Categories: Faculty|Research Mead Witter Foundation Associate Professor Peter G. Adamczyk directs the UW Biomechatronics, Assistive Devices, Gait Engineering and Rehabilitation Laboratory (UW BADGER Lab) in Mechanical Engineering. The BADGER Lab aims to enhance physical and functional recovery from orthopedic and neurological injury through advanced robotic devices. They study the mechanisms by which these injuries impair normal motion and coordination, and target interventions to encourage recovery and/or provide biomechanical assistance. Their work primarily addresses impairments affecting walking, running, and standing. Core engineering research includes development and control of advanced semi-active foot prostheses, rehabilitation robots and wearable sensor systems. They apply these developments to advance assessment and rehabilitation in persons with lower limb amputation, balance impairments, hemiparesis, and other mobility challenges. View Prof. Adamczyk’s faculty research video feature >> Mechanical Engineering Research – Peter Adamczyk Close Video IN TECHNICAL TERMS What one project are you most excited about working on right now? So many exciting things! But for the moment I’ll highlight some exciting research that is resulting in papers this summer as the project comes to conclusion. The project is about using improvements to the detailed reconstruction of leg and foot movements from wearable movement sensors to help inform individual-specific choices about which devices to use to deal with mobility impairments. Specifically, the branch furthest along addresses “foot drop” in multiple sclerosis, comparing an electrical stimulation device (a neuroorthosis) vs. an ankle-foot orthosis (a form of ankle brace). We are studying which device works better for improving foot clearance relative to the ground, as well as how they affect changes in foot clearance over time in a fatiguing 6-minute walk. This paper by Yisen Wang shows a technical advancement in how we get the detailed reconstruction of movement. This paper by Heidi Fehr shows how we attach a 3D-scan of the foot and shoe to that reconstruction and use the resulting model to estimate foot clearance and other details. And an upcoming paper (not yet complete) by Jenny Bartloff will show statistical results for those outcomes across 11 subjects, along with other important clinical metrics. What do you think the impact will be on tech and society? The hoped-for impact is that this technique will lower the barrier to getting detailed data about individual-specific responses to these two interventions, and improve how choices about which device to use are made. The human-subjects results will hopefully clarify the ways in which each of those interventions is better and worse than the other in certain circumstances, so that even without individualized data, people can make better decisions about which to acquire and use. Learn more via Prof. Adamczyk’s lab website.