Michael Black, Odest (Chad) Jenkins, and John Donoghue of Neuroscience have been awarded a $300,000-plus grant from the Office of Naval Research, under the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP). The funding will support the development of a facility to capture and control arm and hand motion, and will include a state-of-the-art motion capture system and robot hand. The resource will be vital to their efforts to develop algorithms through which amputees or paralyzed patients can operate prosthetic arms and hands to carry out activities of daily living.
Of the 933 proposals DURIP received, 183 awards were granted to 88 academic institutions ranging from $51,000 to $1 million with an average award of $217,000. DURIP supports the purchase of state-of-the-art equipment that augments current university capabilities or develops new university capabilities to perform cutting-edge defense research.
The complete list of winning proposals may be viewed at: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar2006/d20060316DURIP.pdf.
