Lab Notebook

Video, Slides

Keeping a professional record of your design work is a requirement of the course. If maintained properly, lab notebooks serve as an official and legal record of the development of the intellectual property related to your project. It also serves as a way to document and track changes to your design, results of all tests performed, and the effort you have put into your project. A well-kept notebook will simplify writing of all required documentation for this course (design review, final paper, etc) as all of the information in those documents should already exist in your notebook. Finally, keeping a notebook is simply good engineering practice and likely will be required by future employers, so it is a good idea to get in the habit of maintaining one now.

The Book

Any notebook with permanent bindings designed for laboratory record keeping is acceptable. Notebooks should have pre-numbered pages and square grids on their pages. We will not accept normal spiral-bound notebooks, as these are not permissible in court since pages can be easily replaced. While most of you probably won't be taking your design to court, we want to teach you to get into the habit of keeping legally acceptable records. Some of you may decide you do want to patent your project, so it will be very beneficial to have given yourself the legal advantage from the start.

Electronic Notebook

Alternatively, lab notebooks may be kept digitally as Markdown documents in a Git repo on Github or Gitlab, as in the example below. See a complete example of a 445 Git repo here.

notebooks/
├── alex/
│   ├── README.md
│   └── an_image.png
├── pouya/
│   └── README.md
└── nick/
    ├── README.md
    └── another_image.png
	

Notebook entries:

Each complete entry should include:

  1. Date
  2. Brief statement of objectives for that session
  3. Record of what was done

The record will include equations, diagrams, and figures. These should be numbered for reference in the narrative portion of the book. Written entries and equations should appear on the right-hand page of each pair. Drawn figures, diagrams, and photocopies extracted from published sources should be placed on the left-hand side, which is graph-ruled. All separate documents should be permanently attached to the notebook. All hand-written entries must be made in pen.

Overall, the book should contain a record that is clear and complete, so that someone else can follow progress, understand problems, and understand decisions that were made in designing and executing the project.

What to include:

There is always something to record:

Suppose you are only "kicking around" design ideas for the project with someone, or scanning library sources. Your objective is what you're hoping to find. The record shows what you found or what you decided and why, even if it isn't final.

One of the most common errors is to fail to record these seemingly "unimportant" activities. Down the road, they may prove crucial in understanding when and where a particular idea came from.

Submission and Deadlines

Lab notebooks must be submitted at lab checkout on Reading Day. If you are unable to attend lab checkout, please make arrangements with your TA ahead of time.

Low Cost Myoelectric Prosthetic Hand

Michael Fatina, Jonathan Pan-Doh, Edward Wu

Low Cost Myoelectric Prosthetic Hand

Featured Project

According to the WHO, 80% of amputees are in developing nations, and less than 3% of that 80% have access to rehabilitative care. In a study by Heidi Witteveen, “the lack of sensory feedback was indicated as one of the major factors of prosthesis abandonment.” A low cost myoelectric prosthetic hand interfaced with a sensory substitution system returns functionality, increases the availability to amputees, and provides users with sensory feedback.

We will work with Aadeel Akhtar to develop a new iteration of his open source, low cost, myoelectric prosthetic hand. The current revision uses eight EMG channels, with sensors placed on the residual limb. A microcontroller communicates with an ADC, runs a classifier to determine the user’s type of grip, and controls motors in the hand achieving desired grips at predetermined velocities.

As requested by Aadeel, the socket and hand will operate independently using separate microcontrollers and interface with each other, providing modularity and customizability. The microcontroller in the socket will interface with the ADC and run the grip classifier, which will be expanded so finger velocities correspond to the amplitude of the user’s muscle activity. The hand microcontroller controls the motors and receives grip and velocity commands. Contact reflexes will be added via pressure sensors in fingertips, adjusting grip strength and velocity. The hand microcontroller will interface with existing sensory substitution systems using the pressure sensors. A PCB with a custom motor controller will fit inside the palm of the hand, and interface with the hand microcontroller.

Project Videos