Sensorimotor transformation:The hand that 'sees' to grasp

New findings advance our understanding of how vision is used to guide the hand during object grasping

Design of clamping device for tubular conductors

Tato bakalářská práce je zaměřená na konstrukční návrh upínacího zařízení, které je součástí svařovacích polohovadel pro svařování trubkových hliníkových vodičů ve společnosti ABB. V teoretické části jsou uvedeny jednotlivé požadavky upínacích zařízení s příklady jejich aplikací. Praktická část je zaměřená na konstrukční návrhy jednotlivých dílů, splňujících požadavky pro trubkové vodiče a funkčnost upínacího systému pro obloukové svařování hliníkových slitin.This bachelor thesis is focused on design of clamping device, which is a part of welding positioners for welding of aluminum tube conductors in ABB company. In the theoretical part, there are individual requirements of clamping devices with examples of their applications. The practical part is focused on the design of individual parts that meet the requirements for tube conductors and the functionality of the clamping system for arc welding of alluminium alloys.

A synergy-based hand control is encoded in human motor cortical areas

How the human brain controls hand movements to carry out different tasks is still debated. The concept of synergy has been proposed to indicate functional modules that may simplify the control of hand postures by simultaneously recruiting sets of muscles and joints. However, whether and to what extent synergic hand postures are encoded as such at a cortical level remains unknown. Here, we combined kinematic, electromyography, and brain activity measures obtained by functional magnetic resonance imaging while subjects performed a variety of movements towards virtual objects. Hand postural information, encoded through kinematic synergies, were represented in cortical areas devoted to hand motor control and successfully discriminated individual grasping movements, significantly outperforming alternative somatotopic or muscle-based models. Importantly, hand postural synergies were predicted by neural activation patterns within primary motor cortex. These findings support a novel cortical organization for hand movement control and open potential applications for brain-computer interfaces and neuroprostheses

Design of cutting device for precise cutting of aluminum alloy tubes

This master thesis is focused on the design of device for precise cutting of aluminum alloy pipes, which are part of gas-insulated switchgears at Hitachi Energy. Due to the implementation of new welding technology using friction stiring, there are increased requirements for the quality and accuracy of cuts, and the overall acceleration of the cutting process, including the associated handling. The current situation is the division of aluminum pipes using a band saw, which is insufficient not only in terms of output quality but also capacity. The proposed solution in this master thesis is in accordance with the necessary quality and capacity input requirements, which is required by friction stir welding technology (FSW). In the introductory research part, the work is focused on methods of material cutting. In the next part, the requirements for the cutting device are evaluated together with the evaluation and selection of a suitable method for the design. In the structural part of the master thesis, the individual concepts of partial parts are given, where the selected variants are supplemented by appropriate calculations

Representation of continuous hand and arm movements in macaque areas M1, F5, and AIP: a comparative decoding study.

OBJECTIVE: In the last decade, multiple brain areas have been investigated with respect to their decoding capability of continuous arm or hand movements. So far, these studies have mainly focused on motor or premotor areas like M1 and F5. However, there is accumulating evidence that anterior intraparietal area (AIP) in the parietal cortex also contains information about continuous movement. APPROACH: In this study, we decoded 27 degrees of freedom representing complete hand and arm kinematics during a delayed grasping task from simultaneously recorded activity in areas M1, F5, and AIP of two macaque monkeys (Macaca mulatta). MAIN RESULTS: We found that all three areas provided decoding performances that lay significantly above chance. In particular, M1 yielded highest decoding accuracy followed by F5 and AIP. Furthermore, we provide support for the notion that AIP does not only code categorical visual features of objects to be grasped, but also contains a substantial amount of temporal kinematic information. SIGNIFICANCE: This fact could be utilized in future developments of neural interfaces restoring hand and arm movements.peerReviewe