Biomimetic Design of FES Control Systems

Control systems for functional electrical stimulation (FES) are usually based on explicit control of individual joint torques by individual muscles. However, the biological controller appears to use distributed spinal interneuronal circuits to control overall limb posture and reflex adjustments. The controllability and stability achieved by the biological sensorimotor system motivates a similar strategy for FES. We are using a combination of motion analysis, modeling and simulation methods to determine whether biomimetic FES controllers are feasible for reach and grasp tasks and whether they will improve the ability of the operator to take advantage of the residual voluntary control that is present in spinal cord injury and stroke patients.