Engineering Co-op News
Engineering Professor and Students Earn IEEE Best Paper Award
February 25, 2021
Dr. Nabeeh Kandalaft, Professor of Engineering, and School of Engineering students, Brendan Beauchamp, Suvro Shahriar, and Christian Vollmers, received the Best Paper Award from IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) for their paper, “A Low Cost sEMG Development Platform for Hand Joint Angle Acquisition,” which was submitted as part of the 2020 annual Information Technology, Electronics, and Mobile Communication Conference (IEMCON).
The IEEE is the largest technical professional organization in the world, dedicated to “advancing technology for humanity” and the IEEE Best Paper Award recognizes a standout paper published and presented by a member in each category along Information Technology, Electronics, and Mobile Communications.
This award-winning paper hypothesized a consolidation of surface electromyography (sEMG) to Muscle Force signal processing and Fingertip Workspace Mathematics (FWM), suggesting a projection matrix from muscle force to joint angles of the hand. The paper described how a SEMG device can learn to describe an individual’s fingertip position in two steps using a supervised kinematic algorithm, and presented low-cost hardware design for acquiring forearm sEMG signals and fingertip joint angles. The findings are significant in that consolidation of sEMG to muscle force and kinematic hand modeling bridges the gap between physiologic research and human interfacing technology.
Dr. Kandalaft spoke highly of the students involved in the project. Brendan, in particular, has been involved with the project for some time. “Brendan has been working with this project since his junior year. He worked hard, with an evident passion for the project,” said Dr. Kandalaft. “Suvro and Christian did an excellent job in assisting with the mechanical components.”
Real-world experiential education is a hallmark of the Engineering programs at Grand Valley State University, with project-based and industry-based learning incorporated into all majors in the Padnos College of Engineering & Computing.
“I am so grateful to my mentors and my team at GVSU, especially Dr. Kandalaft,” shared Brendan. “This project has been an exercise of discipline and imagination, it has been about achieving goals and making new ones. I am honored that the committee of IEMCON would award my research with best paper, receiving the award reminded me of the Dunning-Kreuger Effect. My research and I are still very young with a long journey ahead.”
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