The week started with last weekend, where we went on an awesome tour of the La Paz waterfall gardens and wildlife refuge! From getting to be inches away from sloths and toucans to having butterflies landing on my face to seeing spectacular waterfall views to getting an awesome buffet, this was a great experience! I have way too many pictures from this experience, but here are a few of my favorites!
Posing with the toucan
Sloth up close!
Butterfly on my hand!
Deadliest snake in Costa Rica 😵
Puma just chillin
Rainbow in the waterfall!
This week at work at Hospital Nacional de Niños, we finalized the project we wanted to work on for the semester and began to determine what we need to do to work towards a functioning prototype. We will be working to make current mechanical designs bionic. This required mapping out the steps for the prototype, meeting with previous engineers that had worked on the project, gathering resources, determining the most difficult parts of the project, and beginning to prototype.
We were able to get a servo motor move according to potentiometer movement! The next steps is translating this motor function to movement in fingers of the bionic hand, which we believe to be one of our largest challenges. We will then try to replace the potentiometer with a muscle sensor, another large challenge.
I also began preliminary testing with the forces required to close the current Kwawu mechanical hand model we are working with, and Dr. Vargas worked with me to show some equipment that could be used to get baseline EMG muscle signals for calibration! The expensive equipment he uses will hopefully be used in a gait laboratory that he is looking to build for the hospital soon.
The advanced EMG equipment with which I experimented with Dr. Vargas.
Low-fidelity force testing of the current Kwawu bionic hand mechanical model.
I am excited to continue working on the development of this project and getting more time in the hospital!