The BADGER Lab at UW Madison is doing some groundbreaking research. For example, they are designing a semi-automated prosthetic foot with a sliding weight that can increase or decrease stiffness based on how fast someone is walking. In addition, they have amazing technology like force plates and motion capture cameras. In my internship there, I have seen all three of these things in action.
According to the lab website, the goal of BADGER Lab is to "apply mechanical engineering principles to rehabilitation in order to improve lower limb mobility impairments". They then take these ideas and make prototypes of new prostheses that they test and further improve upon. However, the lab also creates and studies small robots that model various aspects of locomotion. For example, I am working on a rimless wheel robot that simulates a human walk cycle and a so called WobbleBot that shows how humans balance while moving.
I work on these projects with a group of three other high school interns. Our group of interns are supervised and mentored by two graduate students. Dr. Adamczyk supervises the lab as a whole and helps explain some of the more complicated concepts to the interns.
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