Better Living Through Engineering

A separate project involves a multidisciplinary team of students and faculty from CSUN’s engineering, kinesiology and psychology departments. These researchers have created a game-like training environment, using virtual reality (VR), and they’re conducting studies on the technology’s effectiveness.

Bishay and his students are also developing a new system to help prosthetic arm users “feel” different textures. Students from last year’s cohort added to the innovations, creating a wear-able robotic arm — as a temporary aid for people with injuries or for an augmentation experience.

It all started with students’ need for a capstone project, and Bishay’s interest in a material with unique properties.

Bishay joined the CSUN mechanical engineering faculty as an assistant professor in 2015, just a year after earning his Ph.D. in mechanical and aerospace engineering at UC Irvine. In 2016, he started a new senior project for designing morphing airplane wings that can change their shape in flight like birds. He founded CSUN’s Design SMART Lab, where he shares his interest in cutting-edge materials, structures and technologies with his students.

Senior design projects are a year-long endeavor for cohorts of engineering students. In CSUN’s Andrew J. Anagnost College of Engineering and Computer Science, that culminates with a showcase in May, where students’ work is judged by industry professionals. In 2017, Bishay’s department chair asked him to create another new capstone project for a group of students still seeking to enroll in this required culminating practical experience. At that time, Bishay was interested in research on a multi-functional material.

“I was reading a paper about shape-memory alloys and how they can be used in prosthetic arms,” he said. “Then, I found out that there were some mechanical engineering students interested in medical devices and biomedical engineering. At the same time, I was limited in space … So, I decided to establish the Smart Prosthetics Senior Design Project. Our approach at that time was to design a biomimetic transradial (below-the-elbow) prosthetic arm.” Biomimetic refers to an artificial limb that’s designed to mimic how a human limb — in this case, an arm and hand — would move.

Bishay noted that 44% of prosthetic arm users eventually stop using their engineered limbs, according to surveys reported in the recent literature. Users are discouraged by a number of challenges: Upper-limb prostheses can be heavy and difficult to use. Current controllers rely on residual muscles, which may not be available or possible for some. Users also have noted that they’re unable to “feel” textures, Bishay added. Year by year, he and his students have taken on these issues — as the projects have grown, they’ve organized the work into teams.

Each cohort consists of about 15 students. Kurt Trocino, 24, a mechanical engineering major who graduated this past spring, joined the project in 2025. The team was divided into arm design, foot-controller design, and haptic feedback sub-teams, Trocino explained. Students choose their sub-team based on their strengths and what they wish to learn, he said.

“My sub-team had a couple of people that were really good with coding. I’m pretty gifted on the mechanical side of things,” Trocino said. “And we had one guy who’s like a jack-of-all-trades, who understood the electrical, the software and the mechanical.”

Trocino served as a team lead for the foot-controller sub-team. He was one of the presenters at the Senior Design Project Showcase and at CSUNPosium, an annual student conference and exhibition featuring students’ scholarly research and creative activity.

Trocino already had a job lined up after graduation in May and began work as an assembly manufacturing engineer at Teledyne Technologies, which develops engineered systems for aerospace, defense and industrial markets. He said his experience on the senior design team helped him land the job.

“For the job interview itself, I had to give a 20-minute presentation on my relevant technical experience, and one of the project examples I talked about was my contribution to my senior design team,” he said.

As the students’ work advanced, so did their expos-ure to key innovations. In the past few years, they began working with artificial intelligence (AI) technology called Generative Design, created by Autodesk, within its computer-aided design software Fusion.

The first student team’s goal was to create more function and flexibility, ensuring proper grip strength in a prosthetic hand. The team employed shape-memory alloy wires to act as “muscles” for the arms.

“A shape-memory alloy material is considered ‘smart’ because it has multi-functionality,” Bishay said. “For example, if you heat the wire by running electric current through it, it will shrink. And because it is metal, when it shrinks, if it is connected to a flexible object, it will pull the object — it works as a very lightweight actuator. In mechanical engineering, we use actuators to move the mechanisms we design.”

That first cohort, made up of 18 undergraduate students and Bishay, published a research paper in 2020 on their work using the shape memory alloy wires within 3D-printed “bones” connected by flexible, 3D-printed joints, all within a silicon “flesh.”

“This paper [has been] cited multiple times since it was published,” Bishay said. “Last year, some researchers extended this idea to further develop a design of a hand that has more degrees of freedom than our hand … So, our ideas benefited a lot of researchers.”

Typically, prosthetic arms are operated with myoelectric sensors, placed on the remaining part of the missing or amputated limb. The sensors measure tiny electrical impulses generated when a muscle contracts. Bishay noted the drawbacks.

“If these sensors shift away from their intended locations, they might not be as accurate — since they are supposed to target specific muscle groups,” he said. “Also, those who have no residual limb at all, or no muscles in the residual limb, cannot use this technology that is currently dominating the market of prostheses.”

Bishay and students in the fifth cohort of Smart Prosthetics developed a foot controller that’s operated by pressing two buttons in a thin, flexible insole with the toes, to perform a variety of functions. The electronics are housed in a small box, called the sensor controller unit.

To demonstrate its ease, Bishay filmed a video of one of his young daughters using the foot controller, picking up items, carrying them and putting them down.

“Whether you do a single-click, double-click [or] long-click with the toes, you can do different things, like different grips and gestures,” Bishay said. “It’s wireless. It’s immediate. And it is very easy to use.”

In 2024, Bishay filed a utility patent application — currently pending — for the technology.

Another major hurdle for prosthetic arm users is in the training. Bishay began working with faculty members from the Departments of Kinesiology and Psychology, including professors Jake Hinkel-Lipsker, Stefanie Drew and Thomas Chan, to develop a virtual reality (VR) environment.

“VR is enabling us to train users on doing tasks without carrying the physical weight of the arm, and this is one great advantage. It’s [also] taking out some of those psychological barriers,” Bishay said. “You feel that you are alone in this VR world. If anything happens, it’s just a game.”

In 2022, the team was awarded a three-year grant by the National Science Foundation to create a seven-week training program. Some participants did the training using the physical prosthetic arm and controller to pick up blocks and sort them into bins. Other participants used VR headsets and manipulated a virtual arm in a virtual lab setting, while a computer tracked the user’s performance, motions and gaze.

To restore the sense of touch, Bishay and students began designing a haptic feedback system, also called tactile feedback. The image detection system consists of a small camera secured to the wrist. As the fingers touch an object, a video is recorded and translated to an image-classification model. Another system applies a gentle rubbing motion on the skin of the remaining limb, sharing the “feel” of the object.

The team’s most recent innovation, a wearable robotic arm, came about after a conversation Bishay had with a family friend who’d recently had rotator cuff surgery and was unable to do simple tasks around the house.

“I wanted to expand the range of potential users of the arms we develop — so that we can help not only those who have upper-limb difference, but also those who need a third arm because of a temporary injury or special work that requires another hand,” Bishay said.

As the prosthetic arm research has expanded, so has the work on Bishay’s original senior design project.

Bishay’s first project in the Design SMART Lab launched in 2016, when he founded the Smart Morphing Wing senior project. The program involves the design of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, that mimic birds’ flight and soaring abilities. Lightweight motors and composite materials have made advances in this area possible.

This academic year, Bishay said, he and his students will focus on developing a drone with vertical take-off and landing capability that can perch and handle a payload.

Students in the Smart Prosthetics program are focusing on developing a child-sized prosthetic arm and an exoskeleton, both to be controlled with foot controllers. Work is also continuing on the haptic feedback system, the VR training system and the design of a robotic arm.

For Bishay, the technologies themselves, while exciting, are only part of the story.

“We are not a company trying to profit from the products we develop,” he said. “We are an educational institution. In addition, our work is mainly focused on applied research.”

This mission, he said, produces lasting outcomes. One is sharing new discoveries with the broader scientific community through published research. Another is pre-paring the next generation of engineers and problem solvers.

“My most important product is the student,” Bishay said. “These students learn so much throughout the year, and then they go into industry and use those skills to change the world around them. I am trying to make my Design SMART lab a place where dreamers can make great achievements that they can remember for the rest of their lives; a place where innovators are polished and sent to society to shine … through transformative ideas and solutions.”