Curious optimization

Artificial intelligence (AI) is getting increasingly good at learning, but learning is a distinct concept from being curious. When you learn, you sit back and absorb what's happening. When you're curious, you act in ways to explore your world. We're developing numerically efficient ways to enable curious optimization and AI. Our preliminary results demonstrate that enabling numerically efficient curious optimization results in better, long-term results across a variety of contexts ranging from industrial processes to healthcare and public policy.

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Improving control of prosthetic limbs

People are pretty smart. Prosthesis control signals are noisy. Existing control interfaces don't really take either of these facts into account. Computational motor control is a promising approach to understanding how people control their limbs that can account both for the intelligence of people and the uncertainty of their available control signals. We are applying it to prosthesis control with the hope that if we can accurately model people-in-the-loop for existing control strategies, we can then use our model to evolve better control strategies that harness the intelligence of people and minimize the effect of signal uncertainty on performance.

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Archived: Exoskeleton and lower-limb prosthesis design and control

Design and control of exoskeletons and lower-limb prostheses are challenging in different ways than upper-limb devices: walking can be thought of as the art of continuously falling, so designing human-like control strategies that enable walking and yet gaurantee stability is a challenging goal. We've designed and tested control strategies that achieve this goal, tested them with end-users, and patented several of our strategies and designs.

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Archived: Myoelectric prosthesis design

By spending time understanding the clinical needs of people who choose not to use a prosthesis, and by digging deep into the theory of motor and transmission theory, we developed a small yet powerful prosthetic arm that was tested in field trials. Components were licensed to several commercial companies.

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Archived: Body powered prosthesis design

Body-powered prostheses are lightweight, rugged and have an amazing amount of fine control and natural sensory feedback due to the cables that link them to the shoulder harness. Unfortunately, cables can only pull, so devices have to be spring-loaded: either open or closed. There are pros and cons to both approachs depending on the situation. We explored designs that made it easy to switch between these two modes without having to adjust the slack in the cable, and tested the device in a field trial.

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Current students and post-docs

Name Tenure Research topic
Malin Ramne Ph.D. Candidate at Chalmers University of Technology, 2023- Computational modelling of phantom limb pain
Alex Lizotte Ph.D. Candidate at Western University, 2023- Upper limb device design
Ali Estarami Ph.D. Candidate in Electrical Engineering, 2022- Dual optimal control of chaotic systems
Zahed Dastan Ph.D. Candidate in Electrical Engineering, 2019- Control-theoretic approaches to gait termination in bipedal robots
Andrew Mathis Ph.D. Candidate in Mechanical Engineering, 2018- Control stability of dual nonlinear model precitive control of time-varying systems
Anjana Gayathri Ph.D. Candidate in Electrical Engineering, 2017- Computational motor control
Michelle Sybring Ph.D. Candidate in Mechanical Engineering, 2016- Passive lower-limb prosthesis optimization

Alumni

Name Tenure Institution Where they went
Vince D'Entremont NSERC Summer intern, 2022 UNB UNB
Rose He NSERC Summer intern, 2021 UNB UNB
Alexandre Banks NSERC/NBHRF summer Intern, 2021 UNB UNB
Raul Santiesteban Cos, PhD MS.c. student, 2017-2021 UNB
Ishtar Al-Tahir MS.c. student, 2017-2021 UNB Clinical Engineer in training, Service New Brunswick
Alexandre Banks NSERC/NBHRF summer Intern, 2020 UNB UNB
Kurt Stewart MS.c. student, 2017-2020 UNB Intern at Ekoskeleton startup in BC
Samuel Campbell MS.c. student, 2017-2020 UNB Mechanical engineer in training at Dillon Consulting Ltd
Neil Chambers MS.c. student, 2017-2020 UNB Equipment Services Engineer, LuminUltra
Bailey Hume Summer Intern, 2019 UNB McMaster University
Martyn Popitak Mitacs summer Intern, 2019 UNB Schevchenko National University of Kyiv
Dan Blustein, PhD Postdoctoral fellow, 2015-2018 UNB Assistant Professor, Rhodes College
Ahmed Shehata PhD student, 2015-2018 UNB Postdoctoral fellow, U of Alberta
Ricardo Bautista-Quintero PhD student, 2015-2018 UNB Postdoctoral fellow, UNB
Nathan Quinn MSc student, 2015-2018 UNB Project Engineer, Japan
Katie Wilson MSc student, 2015-2018 UNB Project Engineer, UNB
Matthew MacLennan NSERC summer Intern, 2018 UNB UNB
Eduardo Alcala Orozco Mitacs summer Intern, 2018 UNB MSc student, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico
Mortiz Nipshagen Mitacs summer Intern, 2017 UNB Universitat Osnabruck, Germany
Benjamin Tremblay Summer Intern, 2017 UNB Master's student, UNB
Samuel Campbell Summer Intern, 2017 UNB Master's student, UNB
Kurt Stewart Summer Intern, 2017 UNB Master's student, UNB
Matthew Sampson Summer Intern, 2017 UNB UNB
Satinder Gill, PhD Postdoctoral fellow, 2016-2017 UNB UNB
Amin Beirami PhD student, 2015-2016 UNB
Benjamin Tremblay Summer Intern, 2016 UNB UNB
Anjana Gayathri Summer Intern, 2016 UNB National Institute of Technology,Tiruchirapalli India
Reva Johnson PhD student, 2013-2015 Northwestern University Assistant Professor, Valparaiso University
Rajat Hebbar MITACS Summer Intern, 2015 UNB National Institute of Technology Karnataka India
Nathan Quinn NBHRF Summer Intern, 2015 UNB Master's student, UNB
Christian Grandmaison Summer Intern, 2015 UNB UNB
Adam Sterner NSERC Summer Intern, 2015 UNB UNB
Heather Daley PhD student, 2014-2015 UNB UNB, Research Assistant
Tommaso Lenzi, PhD Postdoctoral fellow, 2012-2015 RIC Assistant Professor, University of Utah
Sophie Daigle Summer Intern, 2014 UNB UNB
Katie Wilson Summer Intern, 2014 UNB UNB
Adrian Aleman Summer Intern, 2014 UNB University of Guadalajara
Austin Lawrence Co-op, 2012-2013 RIC Master's student, Northwestern
Vy Pham Master's student, 2012 Northwestern University Engineer, Baxter Healthcare
Kelsey Berning Summer Intern, 2012 RIC Northwestern University
Alex Trazkovich Master's student, 2011-2012 Northwestern University Electromechanical Engineer, Cooper Tire
Evren Samur Post-doc, 2011-2012 RIC Assistant Professor, Bogazici University
Robert Gregg Post-doc, 2011-2013 RIC Assistant Prof., University of Texas, Dallas
John Spanias Summer Intern, 2011 RIC Master's student, Northwestern
Sarah Cohick Summer Intern, 2011-2012 RIC Medical Resident, Rush Hospital
Joshua Hooks Summer Intern, 2011 RIC University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Anthony Duran Summer Intern, 2011 RIC Northwestern University
Jessica Treasure-Gleasch Co-op, 2011 RIC Kettering University
Reva Van Aartsen Master's student, 2010-2013 Northwestern University PhD with me
Lawrence Burkart Master's student, 2010-2011 Northwestern University Engineer, Kyocera Corporation
Tim Bettger Summer Intern, 2009 RIC Master's student, RWTH Aachen University
Nattaporn Intawachirarat Master's student, 2008-2012 Mahidol University Research Scientist, Mahidol Physical Therapy
Wirawat Sirisopha Master's student, 2008-2012 Mahidol University