Ronald Triolo, professor of orthopaedics, associate professor of biomedical engineering and executive director of the Advanced Platform Technology Center of Excellence at Louis Stokes Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and principal researcher Musa Audu earned a $2.37 million grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Their research, “Automatic Control of Standing Balance with Functional Neuromuscular Stimulation,” aims to apply advanced biomechanical modeling and computer simulation techniques to develop new control elements that allow users to shift position away from the nominal upright position, maintain the user-specified posture by automatically adjusting stimulation based on joint angle and center of mass acceleration and initiate a reactive step to remain upright when challenged by large destabilizing disturbances that might otherwise cause a fall.