A trio of innovative students who last year won a national competition based around the Raspberry Pi computer have used their prize money to develop a project aimed at medical rehabilitation.

The revolutionary project, called IndePIdance, is the brain child of William Dash, Jimi Harrold and Greg Wallis, from Truro, whose ambition is to develop a muscle monitoring system combined with a robotic exoskeleton controlled by a Raspberry Pi computer.

By identifying electrical impulses within the body, the system relates these to movement of the robotic suit, enabling the user to move freely and potentially allowing the previously immobile to become mobile.

The team, who all study at Truro and Penwith College, were previously successful at the national PA Consulting Raspberry Pi competition with an earlier project, Revolution Pi, which used an eye-tracking system to control a computer, again aimed at helping people with mobility issues.

Winning the Sixth Form and College Award at the competition, the team have used their prize money to purchase 3D printers to aid them with their new innovation.

William said: “We used a technique called electromyography (EMG), which works by using electrodes to measure the potential difference across areas of high neuron activity. We analysed the data produced using a method known as the Fourier transform, that we programmed and ran on the Raspberry Pi. This allowed us to look for particular frequencies that showed consistency with the physical movement of muscles.

“We also used 3D printers, purchased with the prize money from last year’s competition, to print casing/mounting pieces for this project. This enabled us to make our project’s hardware as compact as possible and allowed us to mount it to the limbs of test subjects with ease.

“We are now refining our analysis program so that we can get the most consistent readings possible, following this we will proceed to use this data for controlling real world sensors.”