Development Of A Neurobehavioral Device For Investigating The Neural Mechanism On Reaching And Grasping

This thesis aims to outline the development of an experiment platform designed tocarry out three functions:(1) induce subjects to finish intended trials;(2) connect andsynchronize data acquisition equipment;(3) actively monitor the experiment process.We designed the mechanical structure of the device according to the subject’sbehavioral characteristics during a reach to grasp task. The mechanical structure designincludes a main body frame structure, a positioned and shaped experiment object, andpressure sensors and constructs to fix angle sensors. To meet experimental demands, thedevice provides subjects with objects of different sharpness, location and orientation. Thedevice is also designed to resist potential damage from the experimental subjects.The control system is developed on the basis of the C8051F020microcontroller.Pressure sensors are used to confirm whether the subject has touched the specifiedlocation. To improve control precision and reliability, angle sensors are used to realizeclosed position loop control. The control system consists of the main control module, thesignal processing module and the motor control module. Stepper motor control, signalprocessing and communication functions are realized in the Silicon Laboratories IDEdevelopment environment.In addition, this thesis also completes comprehensive control program developmentbased on MFC. The program mainly includes parameter configuration module, hardwaredebugging module and experimental process control module. The parameter configurationmodule sets parameter settings such as action time during each stage of the reach to grasptask, target types, and initialization and disturbance conditions; the hardware debuggingmodule assesses whether the motors, sensors, LED and other hardware functions in ourexperiment device are in good condition. The experimental process control module hasthree main functions: recording and displaying state parameters during tasks, communication with signal acquisition equipment, and experiment schedule control.Finally, we used humans as the experiment subjects for the purpose of testing thereliability and accuracy of the system. The preliminary experimental result shows that thesystem can guide subjects to finish the specified tasks successfully and record experimentdata accurately, providing an advanced means for carrying out nervous system analysis.