First Place at Science Fair for Student using BYB Gear

My name is Azrin Khan and I am currently a junior (11th grade) in Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet Senior High School in California. My purpose is to build a device which will alert humans when they are going to have muscle cramps, and it will keep a record of the intensity of the cramp and how many times it happened. In addition to that, I am also going to build an app where all the data will be stored, and their doctor will also have access to the data so that any health issues can be determined and kept in control. This is an idea I got after watching all the diseases that have muscle cramps as their symptoms, and I believe having muscle cramps should not be neglected but it should be greatly taken care of and kept track of.

I asked Backyard Brains if they could help me with my project, and so I started to work with their Muscle SpikerShield. At the Bravo/USC Science and Engineering Fair last month, I won First Place in my category which was Mathematics and Computer Sciences.

Engineering Goal

The goal of this project was to construct a device which will assist epileptics to be alerted of their condition, and alert others around them to be on the lookout for danger when muscles contract abnormally in the body. Also, code to interpret the data recorded from the device into a human understandable language and using a live graph to plot real-time data which will be useful to both the individual and doctors and other professionals to be updated on the most recent conditions. This is the very first device that uses the electrical potential measured from muscle contraction to identify muscle cramps.

Overview of Project

This project uses an alarming device which sounds whenever muscles contract abnormally in a person’s body so that others nearby can also be aware of the patient’s condition. To test if the device was working, I tested on Lumbricus Terrestris (earthworms) and measured the electrical potential for 30 seconds on each earthworm. The device can also record the electrical potential every second so that the recorded information can be shared with their doctors and other professionals through these updates regarding their conditions. The live graph uses Python 2.7.15, and Python IDLE was used as the developing environment. Piezo Speakers connected to the Arduino Uno and Backyard Brains’ Muscle SpikerShield combination device alarms as soon as the electrical potential units reach 95 to 100. In the future, I would like to use an app to make the live graph available to doctors so that they can keep up with their patient’s health.

Results

In conclusion, my device is functioning properly and in addition to my device, I’ve also designed a shirt with a pocket on the left sleeve that patients can use to hold their devices (see below). The Bravo/USC Science and Engineering Fair 2019 was a huge success for me. In my category, Computer Science and Mathematics, there were very impressive projects; someone used a drone to construct a gas sensor, while another participant coded a website that is designed to help people with OCD. I had a total of three judges who interviewed me, and two of the judges were professors from the KECK School of Medicine of USC and another judge was a lab PI also from the KECK School of Medicine of USC.

Prototype Design

If you have any examples of our gear in the field, don’t hesitate to email us and share your stories! Send us a note at hello@backyardbrains.com 

Have an idea for your own experiment?

Recreate this experiment or perform your own with the Muscle SpikerShield Bundle!

Help us Study the Neuroscience of Sport

Help us win a Grant to Empower a New Generation of Sports Scientists!

Through our adventures at Backyard Brains over the years, we have come to love electromyography, muscle coordination, and the body in movement. We have already begun some classes where we teach muscle physiology through sport! We recently applied for a grant to devote more resources to this new area for us. We made a quick and dirty video under deadline at a local school, and to move to the next phase of the competition, we need eyeballs and likes. Help us out with your screens and your thumbs if you want to!

This is to further develop our fledgling work into making quantitative sports-science an accessible field of research for K12 students!

We’ve tried three sports so far, all favorites of Backyard Brains: baseball, basketball, and soccer. For baseball, we attached electrodes to the triceps while students threw the ball at greater and greater distances. However, the act of throwing a baseball is so violent and fast that the cables would always fly off, making an unstable interface, to put it mildly.

We next tried basketball, with muscles again on the triceps, but our students were pretty young, around 11-13, and they had a hard time launching the basketball with enough force (and good form) to actually reach the basket. Even on adults like ourselves, we did not notice an obvious difference between 2 point and 3 point throws.

Our last attempt was with soccer. We placed electrodes on the quadriceps, and we had markings on the outside gym floor with masking tape of 5 ft, 10 ft, 15 ft, 20 ft, 25 ft, etc.

With this experiment, it was very obvious that the EMG amplitude of the quadriceps contraction increased with the greater distance that the students had to kick the soccer ball, teaching about motor unit recruitment and electrophysiology in a very entertaining way. Learn more about the experiment and the results here!

We have on experiment up currently which teaches students how to study and model Rates of Muscle Fatigue – this is a great intro lab as it can be modified and applied to many sports labs!

This is just the beginning, and we will continue looking for ways to incorporate sport into our physiology experiments, as it makes teaching at the middle and high school very engaging. We would all rather be outside and move our bodies than sit at a desk, anyway.

From Middle School to University, Technology that Helps is Hot!

I was speaking recently to one of our colleagues at Temple University about a project several of his students were working on, and he said something that really struck me, “these students are the first generation to have grown up with 3D printers in their schools, some even in their basements. They know how to use these and other maker tools, and it’s changing education,”

He’s right – every year now, we see more and more schools with Maker Spaces, 3D printers, DIY Electronics, and time set aside for creative, scientific projects. These students are already outpacing the old standards and this phenomenon certainly heralds a bright future!

The project we were discussing was a multi-channel neuroprosthetic that his students were developing with 3D modeling software, a 3D printer, and Backyard Brains tools! Check it out below:

A new trend? Students develop Neuroprosthetics, start Student Organization

This past summer, rising sophomore Morgan R., of Temple University pursued a summer project: with the help of one of her professors, she began the process of developing an affordable, 3D printed Neuroprosthetic powered by the Backyard Brains SpikerShield. What started as a fun summer project grew when she started bringing her friends and classmates on board. Thanks to their interdisciplinary connections, they realized they had the opportunity to make something out of the project and started a Neuroprosthetics Organization at the university, with the aim to develop and donate affordable prosthetics to those of different ability who could benefit from assistive technology.

Their work was made possible thanks to the Creative Arts, Research, and Scholarship (CARAS) program, a funding opportunity at Temple for undergraduates which supports undergraduate creative and scholarly projects.

We reached out directly to Morgan, and her classmate Gabby to learn more about the project, and after some Q&A they provided us with a lot of great details about their project! Below are their words and photos as they describe the process involved, from idea, to prototyping, to student org!

Morgan and Gabby: Our team launched this project by examining the question: How can we make prosthetics more accessible to the general public? After doing research on the industry and current methods, we concluded that they were so expensive because many of the companies who make them are mostly research and prototype oriented and not thinking about accessibility to end users who could use them today.

For our design, we concluded that a myoelectric (or EMG) prosthetic hand could be developed to be both affordable and versatile. We constructed the hand through an engineering program called AutoCAD. This software allows the user to create three-dimensional models that can be printed using a 3D Printer. We drafted two separate original designs for the hand and deliberated the pros and cons of both versions.

We decided upon our preferred design, then we printed and assembled our first hand.

In the end, we decided to print the fingers in three separate pieces, the palm in two separate pieces, and a forearm structure. There were channels running through the palm into the fingers to allow strings of fishing line to run up the forearm structure and loop through at the tips of the finger digits. Each finger needed three strings, so there were about 15 strings total, so after the loop at the top there were about thirty strings running through the tunnel opening.

We came up with a strategy to organize the assortment of strings running through the bottom by two different color coding systems (one upon which finger it was and the other was whether the string received constant tension or an occasional burst. From there, we attached the strings from the opening of the tunnel to servos installed in the forearm attachment. The servos were then connected to an Arduino breadboard and the muscle backyard brains SpikerShield pro. We then used their code to experiment with the mechanism.

Results:

We are excited to continue moving forward with this project this project and to continue research in this field. During the next phase of the project, we would like to use a more precise 3D printer, to reduce the amount of variation from the 3D model to the print. Furthermore, we would like to find a better material to use instead of fishing line, as the degree of motion is not where we would like it to be. The fishing line could only handle so much tension, furthermore, the natural tendons found in the body have more elasticity than the fishing wire. We need to be able to apply a similar degree of tension to the line to create natural movements without the assistance of an external wire.  

We also face issues on the software side. It is challenging to identify individual finger movements through EMG signals. We came up with a few short-term solutions for this: for example, with the single channel SpikerShield, we set finger servomotor activation at different thresholds, so depending on how strong the user’s flex was would change what fingers were activated. The 6-channel SpikerShield Pro has a lot of opportunities to offer individual finger control, but it is challenging to differentiate so many different signals from the forearm.

We are proud of what we’ve accomplished in such a short amount of time and see this as a strong foundation for our future work. We don’t doubt that we will be able to overcome these obstacles. We hope to have the prosthetic working well enough in the next year to give it to a living patient.

From an academic perspective, this project allowed us to put the skills that we gained through our engineering classes to practical use. Furthermore, it allowed us to experience working on a team with individuals who were not all pursuing the same field of study. Teamwork and reliability were key to the success of the project, it took the knowledge and skill of each discipline of the team to succeed.

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This team’s work is a great example of a growing trend: there is a new generation of students who have grown up with access to 3D printers, Arduinos, and other DIY tools. They are also one of the first student groups to begin with the single channel Muscle SpikerShield Bundle and then upgrade their design to allow for multi-channel control by implementing the Muscle SpikerShield Pro!

As you can see above, the students’ development involves a lot of trial and error as they work on functionally mimicking the movement of their prosthetics’ fingers. They are making great progress, and we are excited to share updates from them as their work continues over the school year!

Not just University Students…

It’s not just university students developing Neuroprosthetics and assistive neuro technologies! Here are a few examples of MS and HS students who have developed their own devices using Backyard Brains kits.

This prosthetic grabber was made with a simple servo motor and is strong enough to grip and lift a can of sparkling mineral water! Now nothing will stop anyone from enjoying their bubbles.

This is a great example of a functional prosthetic model, or Biomimicry – by combining our kits with Lego Mindstorms, the students created a doll that would mimic another students kick by recording from their leg.

This student combined his VEX robotics kit with a Muscle SpikerShield to create his NeuroClaw!

Planning an 8th Grade DIY Neuroprosthetics Lab

Ms. Farkas has big plans for her 8th graders this year: continuing their experience with DIY neuroscience from last year, she is branching into the world of prosthetics! Following a successful Donors Choose, she is now planning a unit where groups of students will all be responsible to design and create devices which will be controlled by their nervous systems!

She describes it best:

My Project

This year, we want to continue my students’ Neuroscience journey! With the help of the Backyard Brains Muscle SpikerShield Kits, we plan to conceptualize, research, design, build and control our own Neuroprosthetics. Through collaboration with the team at Backyard Brains, we are piloting a project aimed at middle school students!

We’re excited to update you on the results of her class projects!

Required Kit:
Muscle SpikerShield / Pro

Develop your own Neuroprosthetics using the Arduino based Muscle SpikerShield or Muscle SpikerShield Pro!