Improved Microcontroller-Based Electronic Respiratory Training

Respiratory training is a critical component of many rehabilitation plans, including those of stroke patients. Many current respiratory training techniques lack efficient methods for quantifying progress and updating testing parameters. A previously-developed microcontroller-based device, designed in conjunction with clinicians at the Institute for Rehabilitation Science and Engineering at Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital, has demonstrated promising results. Here, a prototype of a revised device that is network connected and remoatly sends trial information is presented.\ The proposed device demonstrates enhanced functionality, while being smaller and using less power than the original prototype

A Low-Cost, Reliable, High-Throughput System for Rodent Behavioral Phenotyping in a Home Cage Environment

Inexpensive, high-throughput, low maintenance systems for precise temporal and spatial measurement of mouse home cage behavior (including movement, feeding, and drinking) are required to evaluate products from large scale pharmaceutical design and genetic lesion programs. These measurements are also required to interpret results from more focused behavioral assays. We describe the design and validation of a highly-scalable, reliable mouse home cage behavioral monitoring system modeled on a previously described, one-ofa- kind system [1]. Mouse position was determined by solving static equilibrium equations describing the force and torques acting on the system strain gauges; feeding events were detected by a photobeam across the food hopper, and drinking events were detected by a capacitive lick sensor. Validation studies show excellent agreement between mouse position and drinking events measured by the system compared with video-based observation – a gold standard in neuroscience

Automated Indoor RFID Inventorying using a Self-Guided Micro-Aerial Vehicle

A Micro-Aerial Vehicle (MAV) system is presented for automated indoor inventorying using passive radio frequency identification (RFID). This system utilizes a combination of onboard sensing and processing in order to achieve flight stabilization, generate floor maps, and perform path planning. The proposed state estimation method along with a control feedback strategy are demonstrated to be sufficiently accurate for operation in the indoor environment and the proposed path planning technique is shown to be effective for guiding the MAV while it performs automated RFID scanning