MRI: Acquisition of Biomechanical Movement Baselining Technology Suite for Wearable Technology and Stretch Sensor-based Validation of Lower Body Characteristics

Human performance engineering at Mississippi State University, conducted by a large, interdisciplinary team, representing diverse researchers and practitioners in academics, athletics, & industry, develops and validates wearable technologies that can be used to capture human movement in realistic environments. Testing in labs is critical for knowledge advancement.

The instrument suite consists of state-of-the-art Gait Real-time Analysis Interactive Lab (GRAIL) system and surface electromyography (sEMG) sensors for human performance assessment. The broader impacts of the projects arising with use of the proposed technology suite will increase research capacity and permit the crossing of scalability barriers for current wearable technology prototypes developed through the human performance engineering research and development program.

This human performance laboratory suite will empower interdisciplinary researchers to advance the health and welfare of the American public through new types of wearable technology solutions and technology validation. The success of such research will enhance existing partnerships between MSU and athletic, industrial, military, and medical partners while further growing the infrastructure for research and education with an interdisciplinary focus.

The acquired system build supports research of the human performance engineering team, including a project entitled “From the Ground Up – Using Soft Robotic Sensors (SRS) to Create a Foot and Ankle Wearable that Accurately Captures Real-time, Kinematic and Kinetic Data During Athletic Training” by extending the capability of current instrumentation. The combined GRAIL and sEMG system provides a more accurate, convenient, and safe platform for the generation of large data sets, especially with clinically at-risk populations.

Activities enabled by the instrument suite advance transformative research within the field of human factors engineering by validating Soft Robotic Sensors (SRS) as a motion capture tool for all lower limb segments in the human body. The instrument suite will allow for more control and repeatability during participant testing of complex, dynamic movements (gait, slip/trip perturbations), and will enable a much faster data collection process, allowing the research team to properly utilize state-of-the-art deep learning approaches requiring large amounts of data.

Secondary transformative research areas include: (1) Gait-based disabilities in pediatrics, (2) Chronic ankle instability, (3) fall prevention, (4) fatigue and unsafe behavior identification systems, and (5) autonomous vehicles including pedestrians and their behaviors around autonomy.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.