Smart, Self-Powered Knee Implants

These implants can provide doctors with regular activity updates and are powered by the patient’s movement.

Wireless Sensor “Stickers” Track Physiological Signals

These stickers wirelessly beam health readings to a receiver clipped onto clothing.

Rubber-Like Adhesive Film Sticks to Highly Deformable Areas

Adhesives used for common pain-relieving bandages often do not stick properly when attached to places that encounter large, inhomogenous bending motion, like elbows and knees. To...

Robotic Exoskeleton (EXO)

The Exoskeleton (EXO) is a device that falls into a new classification of robotics called wearable robots. On-orbit applications include countermeasures and dynamometry, allowing for continual assessment of a...

Mobility Augmentation System Using Switchable Spring Mechanisms

The disclosed device provides key elements to enabling compact exercise machines that overcome many of the disadvantages of the current spacesuit, as well as medical prosthetics...

2013 Create the Future Design: Medical Category Winner

Vitalflo James Dieffenderfer, Mike Brown, and Leigh Johnson
North Carolina State University,
Apex, NC

Over 25 million Americans have been diagnosed with asthma, and of...

Spacesuit Simulator Meets NASA Training Needs

Aurora Flight Sciences delivered a completed Space Suit Simulator (S3) to NASA following the successful completion of a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) effort.

Gait Analysis Based on Inertial and Magnetic Sensors

Motion analysis often is based on stereophotogrammetry, which estimates the three-dimensional coordinates of points on an object by measurements made in two or more photographic images...

Lightening the Load of Recovery

Ask the Denver attorney whose legs were smashed in a car accident. Ask the veterans rehabilitating from injuries sustained while defending the nation. Ask NBA star Blake Griffin, or NFL safety Jim Leonhard,...

Laser Sintering for Customized Medical Applications

Engineers have long been aware of the potential of laser sintering to create innovative and beneficial medical products. Because it is an additive (layer-by-layer) manufacturing process,...

Patient Monitoring Using Capacitive Sensors

Capacitive sensors can be used to measure many different physical parameters that are important when monitoring the health of patients. In particular, the technical advances made by sensor...

Motion Capture Software and Systems for Gait Analysis and Biomedicine

Nowadays, there are many technologies available that are used to quantify the motion of humans and animals. However, recent innovations in optical motion capture systems...

Ex Vivo Growth of Bioengineered Ligaments and Other Tissues

A method of growing bioengineered tissues for use in surgical replacement of damaged anterior cruciate ligaments has been invented. An anterior cruciate ligament is one of two...

Second-Generation Six-Limbed Experimental Robot

The figure shows the LEMUR II—the second generation of the Limbed Excursion Mechanical Utility Robot (LEMUR), which was described in "Six-Legged Experimental Robot " (NPO-20897), NASA Tech...

Releasable Conical Roller Clutch for Knee Brace

A compact conical roller clutch can be either (1) engaged to obtain both positive locking against rotation in one sense and freewheeling in the opposite sense or (2) disengaged to obtain free...