Latest News
Congratulations to Gavin Sueltz for his successful defense of his MS thesis, Sensor-Placement-Agnostic Sonomyography via Sparse Optical Flow for Assistive Devices, the HRELab’s first! His work has already been accepted for publication at the IEEE RAS/EMBS 11th International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob 2026), where he’ll be presenting in August.
We’re excited to announce the ~first batch of HRELab graduates: Gavin Sueltz, Jono Jenkens, and Truman Gundersen with MS degrees, and Maria Herrera, Gabe Parra and Ari Sanders with BS degrees. We’re thrilled to keep Maria and Gabe around for additional MS and BS degrees, respectively. Congratulations to all for this huge milestone!
Congratulations to HRELab undergraduate Gabriel Parra, who earned the University of Utah’s Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award, granted to only 1–2 engineering students per year. Check out the ceremony recording here and the department article on his accomplishment here!
Just wrapped up 2 podium and 4 poster presentations at the Rocky Mountain American Society of Biomechanics annual meeting in Estes Park, CO! Kimia Khoshnami and Gavin Sueltz gave oral presentations on their recent work on neuromusculoskeletal modeling for end-effector-robot-mediated rehabilitation and sensor-location-agnostic sonomyographic control, respectively. Our 4 poster presentations included Ajay Anand et al.’s work on dexterity-optimizing rehab robot control; Gabe Parra’s recent results on data-driven characterizations of post-stroke neuromusculoskeletal behavior; Jono Jenkens’s AR display designs for 6-DoF rehabilitation robot task specification (plus a live demo!); and Carson Wynn and Simon Padgen’s modular platform for biosignal-driven robot manipulator control.
Congratulations to Jono Jenkens and Truman Gundersen for presenting their master’s project presentations (on AR display design for robot-mediated rehabilitation and IMU-based assistive robot control, respectively). Congratulations likewise to Maria Herrera and Emma Ferran for presenting their contributions to our latest paper on sensor-location-agnostic sonomyographic control as part of the University of Utah’s Spring 2026 Undergraduate Research Symposium!
The HRELab had a great conference debut last week in Chicago at RehabWeek and the International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR). Check out our (now uploaded) presentation materials, including our first pilot study on our new upper-limb rehabilitation robot platform and late-breaking work on sonomyography, augmented reality, high-dimensional assistive device control, and synergy analysis.
PI Hallock and Carson Wynn received a Research Incentive Seed Grant through the University of Utah Research Foundation to develop A Robotic Platform and Scaffolded Learning Method for High-Degree-Of-Freedom Assistive Device Control, the lab’s first funded grant!
Come find the HRELab this week in Chicago at RehabWeek and the International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR). We’ll be presenting our first pilot study on our new upper-limb rehabilitation robot platform — and debuting the associated OpenRobotRehab project — as well as presenting 4 (!) late-breaking results posters on sonomyography, augmented reality, high-dimensional assistive device control, and synergy analysis. Hope to see you there!
