Using computer vision to track social distancing

April 15, 2020

With advanced computer vision models and live public street cam video, a University of Michigan startup is tracking social distancing behaviors in real time at some of the most visited places in the world.

Voxel51’s new tool shows—quite literally—an uptick in public gathering in Dublin on St. Patrick’s Day, for example, and at New Jersey’s Seaside Heights boardwalk during a recent weekend of unusually good weather.

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An ultra-precise mind-controlled prosthetic

March 9, 2020

In a major advance in mind-controlled prosthetics for amputees, University of Michigan researchers have tapped faint, latent signals from arm nerves and amplified them to enable real-time, intuitive, finger-level control of a robotic hand.

To achieve this, the researchers developed a way to tame temperamental nerve endings, separate thick nerve bundles into smaller fibers that enable more precise control, and amplify the signals coming through those nerves. The approach involves tiny muscle grafts and machine learning algorithms borrowed from the brain-machine interface field. 

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