(Currently funded by NASA; previously funded by NIH, and by DOD/USAF) This project involves the development of an artificial vision sensor using biomimetic aspects of the compound eye of the common housefly, Musca domestica. This sensor exhibits extreme sensitivity to motion (called motion hyperacuity), operates in a very wide dynamic range of ambient lighting, has very fast extraction of motion/position information with little or no CPU overhead, requires very little power to operate, and is very small and lightweight.
This project uses a specialized balance plate instrument to indirectly detect traumatic brain injury and concussion that are below the threshold of more traditional testing methods. Past work has included a study of the UW Hockey Team during a season, measuring changes after high g-force contact with opposing players.
This ongoing project evaluates and compares a wide variety of commercially available instruments for their effectiveness in both clinical and research settings, to assess human balance-related parameters such as Center of Pressure (CoP). Uses of CoP include both diagnostic and human performance applications.
This project developed a computerized intelligent assistant to monitor and provide diagnostic and therapeutic information for critically injured patients being transported by medical aircraft from the battlefield clinic to a regional military hospital. All patients on board the aircraft could be monitored simultaneously. The system used a multichannel data acquisition system to monitor a wide range of biomedical signals, along with a specialized pattern recognition system to interpret the patients’ condition, project the probable trend of the condition, and recommend intervention when appropriate. This project was in collaboration with Defense Research Technologies (DRT). Originally funded by USAF.
Assistive Technology for Wheelchair ControlThis project helped develop the means for a severely handicapped patient to control and direct a powered wheelchair. Some patients are unable to use a joystick or even a sip-and-puff controller, and for them this system acquired electro-oculogram (EOG) signals due to eye movements, and translated that into control signals to direct the movement of the wheelchair. This project was partially funded by NSF.
This project developed a system to safely and rapidly treat retinal disorders such as diabetic retinopathy and retinal tears. The Computer-Assisted Laser Optical System for Ophthalmic Surgery (CALOSOS) can very quickly place multiple therapeutic lesions at specific desired locations on the retina, as selected by the ophthalmologist using an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI), in a matter of seconds. Separate subsystems provided real-time eye tracking and beam steering to maintain laser point-of-aim despite eye movements during the procedure and real-time control of lesion depth during laser irradiation. This project was funded by NIH.
(Currently funded by DOE) This project is developing methods to detect and image “special nuclear material,” such as enriched uranium and plutonium, regardless of how it is hidden, shielded, or contained. It makes use of instruments that detect muons, subatomic particles present everywhere on Earth, and performs reconstructions that have some similarities to medical computed tomography (CT). This project is in collaboration with Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), National Security Technologies (NSTec), and Decision Sciences Corporation (DSC). Graduate students who work on this project must be U.S. citizens.
This ongoing work investigates the effectiveness of various hands-on exercises and projects to teach practical real-time DSP. This work has yielded a large number of journal and conference papers, on-location workshops, and a widely-used textbook. This work is supported in part by Texas Instruments.
Note: almost all of Dr. Wright’s research is performed in collaboration with Dr. Steven Barrett, also in the ECE Dept at UW.
Drs. Wright and Barrett are also associated faculty members of three interdisciplinary graduate programs: Neuroscience, Molecular and Cellular Life Sciences, and Biomedical Sciences.
