Provost's Colloquium

Advances in Upper Limb Prostheses Control, Haptic Feedback, and Training Systems

Wednesday, March 26, 2025 at 3:00 p.m.
Location - The Orchard Conference Center

Please be sure to RSVP by Monday, March 24, 2025 at 5:00 p.m.
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Research and Sponsored Programs, with support from the Jerome Richfield Memorial Fund, organizes each year an event that celebrates a CSUN faculty member engaged in high quality, high-impact research, where they are named as the Richfield Memorial Fellow. The Fellow presents a lecture at the Provost’s Colloquium Series, which is designed to highlight and celebrate the scholarly achievements of our faculty, and to provide an opportunity for socialization among faculty, administrators, students, and staff.

We are happy to announce that this year’s 2025 Jerome Richfield Memorial Fellow is Dr. Peter L Bishay from the department of Mechanical Engineering.  Dr. Bishay received his PhD degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from the University of California, Irvine in 2014. He published over 50 research papers in reputable journals and conference proceedings spanning topics in computational mechanics, composite and smart structures, aerospace structures, and prosthesis design and control. He founded the “Smart Morphing Wing” and “Smart Prosthetics” research-based senior design projects at CSUN. His research has been supported by US DoD, NASA, and NSF. Dr. Bishay is a recipient of multiple prestigious awards, such as the “Future Technology Leader Award” (2018), the “Distinguished Engineering Educator Achievement Award” (2022) from The Engineer's Council, the “Highly Influential and Sustained Innovation Award” (2021), and the “CSUN Distinguished Teaching Award” (2024).  The Richfield Memorial Fellow celebrates a CSUN faculty member engaged in high-quality, high-impact research. Dr. Bishay will present a lecture in the spring semester as part of the Provost's Colloquium Series.

Requests for accommodation services (e.g., sign language interpreters or transcribers) must be made at least five (5) business days in advance. Please contact Deanna A Maidy (deanna.maidy@csun.edu) by March 24, 2025. 

Presentation abstract:

The acceptance of artificial limbs to augment the bodies of individuals with missing limbs does not only depend on the capabilities of such prosthetic devices, but also on the ease of control and the interaction between the user and the prosthesis. After years of developing electromyography (EMG) systems for controlling arm prostheses, the rejection rates of prosthetic arms remain high due partly to the limitations of such control systems. In various surveys, prosthetic arm users also emphasized the weight burden and lack of feedback when utilizing available prosthetic limbs in the market. This presentation concentrates on the ongoing endeavors to address these concerns, with a particular emphasis on the applied research that was spearheaded at CSUN to enhance the quality of life for prosthetic arm users. Recognizing the natural human capability to intentionally move the toes and to connect ankle and foot movements to wrist and hand movements, the foot controller that has been developed offers a simple and intuitive means of prosthesis control. Through a recent NSF grant under the Mind, Machine and Motor Nexus (M3X), a virtual reality (VR) training system for this foot controller has been developed and tested, combining faculty and student talents from CSUN’s Mechanical Engineering, Kinesiology, and Psychology departments. Furthermore, a haptic feedback system that transmits the sensation of touch to prosthetic arm users has also been in development to enhance the user-prosthesis relationship. State-of-the-art design and manufacturing approaches, such as the use of Generative Design (GD) tools, enabled by the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and 3D-printing, have been used in designing and building physical models of prosthetic arms in conjunction with the developed control and haptic feedback systems.

Previous Fellows