October 13, 2014
Neural engineering hackathon: 36 hours, 15 students, five working prototypes
David Bjanes of the UW, left, and Andres Canales of MIT put together their project, iHand.James Wu, UW
The workload and time crunch were comparable to pulling two all-nighters, but you wouldn’t guess that from the energy in the room.
Fifteen students, all wearing matching grey t-shirts, buzzed around the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering Monday morning (Oct. 13), clearly excited to show off their designs.
They had just finished a 36-hour weekend hackathon, a first for the National Science Foundation-funded center headquartered at the University of Washington. Their mission was to work as teams of three to design a low-cost device that could be used to help people in the broad field of neuroscience. Teams worked from 9 a.m. Saturday to 9 p.m. Sunday, then presented their prototypes to a panel of judges Monday morning (I served on the panel).
The team that created iHand – an educational device that demonstrates how a person can use eye blinks to pick up a plastic bottle – took home the prize: Brain “trophies” for each student, plus mentoring and guidance to further develop their prototype.
Andres Canales of MIT wears the headset as part of his team’s iHand project.James Wu, UW
The students used rubber bands and fishing wire fitted on a work glove to mirror the control a human hand might have with normal tendons and ligaments. A noninvasive headset device worn by one person records electrical activity produced by eye muscles when blinking, then transmits those signals to the glove worn by a second person. The glove stimulates the fingers to move, allowing a person who has lost hand control to grab and move an object.
Each team was made up of graduate and undergraduate students from the UW, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and San Diego State University. It was organized by Tyler Libey, a UW doctoral student in bioengineering, and several other graduate students.
Read more about the hackathon.
