After our supervisors approached us about developing our exoskeleton project further, we started by choosing a first author. Christian volunteered since he was primarily responsible for designing the exoskeleton. This part was straightforward, but the real challenge was the amount of time the project took to finalize.
Our project went through a lot of phases. The initial research question was whether vibrotactile feedback during exoskeleton-assisted pinch grasping would prevent users from exerting excessive force, thereby reducing the device’s energy consumption. Since the device was intended for patients with sensory weakness who could not feel their fingertips, we thought of using commercially available numbing creme on the participants’ finger. When we were doing the pilot studies on ourselves, we saw that it was not that effective. This made it difficult to answer our research question on healthy participants.
So, we started making changes to the project. In the end, our project turned out to be about force dynamics of normal and exoskeleton-assisted grasping while lifting an object with varying weights. Furthermore, we looked at the “virtual grasping” setting, where the weight of the object was constant, but the required force to lift it in a virtual setting varied. We collected data from experiments and surveys on the usability of our system.
After much effort, our paper was accepted at RehabWeek 2023 in Singapore. It wasn’t my first publication, but it was the first publication which I actually got to present with my co-authors during the poster session. Jose even got to present his paper on stage, which was another great moment for all of us. Here is the poster we presented and our published paper:
Honestly, I was having my doubts when I booked my ticket to Singapore as I was going to be doing my internship in Berlin at the time and I didn’t want to be distracted. However, it turned out to be the most amazing experience I could imagine. I am very grateful to all my co-authors for putting in the hard work and making this project come alive.
