Electronic Mirror – Rich West part of a team designing next-generation body motion tracker
CAS Computer Science Professor Rich West is highlighted in a recent BU Research article. The following is a quoted passage:
Sheryl Grace is no Bobby Orr. But growing up in northern Ohio—“a place where things froze,” she says—Grace, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the Boston University College of Engineering (ENG), spent plenty of time on skates. So two years ago, when she saw her kids skating with less-than-NHL fluidity, she thought she could teach them a few things—how to get the perfect stride, how to bend the knees low for extra speed. What happened next will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever been a parent, or a kid for that matter: the kids got annoyed, and Grace got exasperated.
But Grace also left the ice that day with inspiration: an idea for an “electronic mirror,” a wearable body motion–tracking device that could help athletes get instant, objective feedback on their technique. Now, with support from a Hariri Institute Research Award, Grace is working to make the device, called a biokinematic data acquisition system. Joining Grace on the project are Richard West, a BU College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of computer science, and Cara Lewis, an associate professor at BU’s College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences: Sargent College (SAR) and director of the SAR Human Adaptation Laboratory. Working together, they hope to create a system that could potentially not just improve athletes’ performances but also help rehabilitation patients learn to move without pain—and perhaps even assist people with disabilities to regain the use of weakened or paralyzed limbs.
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