Categories Sample tasks

This task was developed to highlight the bimanual capabilities of the KINARM Lab. It was built and compiled for Dexterit-E 3.5, using R2013a. It can run on either a KINARM Exoskeleton or KINARM End-Point lab.

Although the intent of the code was re-create the experiments performed by Diedrichsen (2007), there has not been a strict verification to ensure that all details of the experiment have been properly replicated. There are 4 task protocols included: a short demonstration of various parts of the task along with 3 protocols that implement the different experiments in the original paper.

Diedrichsen (2007). Optimal Task-Dependent Changes of Bimanual Feedback Control and Adaptation. Current Biology. 17: 1675–1679, 2007. DOI 10.1016/j.cub.2007.08.051

Normally if you would like to show 10 targets on the screen at once you would have to send 10 VCodes at a time each cycle. This is not much of a problem, but now imagine you would like to show 30 targets at a time, this can be a bit cumbersome. The “show target in background” block helps get around this. A background target is one that is always shown in its “current” state until you send a new command that overrides the current state. Background VCodes are the same as normal VCodes except for 2 small things:
The target type is (normal target type + 100). i.e. a circle is 101.
There is an ID with the VCode that can be 1-1500. This is how you interact and change your permanent target states.

This sample task makes use of the “set target in background” block. The example protocol defines 30 targets of which 10 are shown at a time. When a target is touched its color changes. This is meant purely as an example of how to properly use background targets that are defined in your target table.

The example is made with MATLAB 2013a and compiled for Dex 3.5

P.S. For some reason this task can take a very long time to compile (5+ minutes on my machine that normally takes 1-2 minutes to compile a task)

There is an example of how to create background targets from your target table in another post. That version shows 10 targets at a time. One thing you may have noticed with that example is that the targets show up on the screen in order one at a time and they each take 1/60th of a second to show. This is because your task program needs to wait to ensure each new background target has been accepted. This works reasonably well for up to 60 targets because that will only take ~1s to send all targets.

This example demonstrates several concepts:
Dynamically creating large numbers of VCodes
Sending those VCodes in blocks (in this case 30 at a time)
Adding extra Stateflow charts to you model
Calling Matlab from Stateflow

What this example does specifically is:
Take in one “large” rectangular VCode, one small rectangular “tile” VCode, a number of tiles in the X and Y directions.
Creates X * Y “tile” VCodes that will completely cover the space defined by the “large” VCode
Turns on all of the “tiles” 30 at a time
Waits a specified duration
Turns off all the “tiles” 30 at a time

There is no interaction with the tiles, extending this model to interact with the tiles would not be hard. Limitations of the example are:

Up to 500 targets can be created (read comments in the model for how to make this larger)
Up to 30 targets at a time are sent (read comments in the model for how to make this larger)
All targets are assumed to be rectangular.

You can watch the shapes fill in with tiles. An easy extension to this would be to display a large black target over top of the permanent targets while they are being filled in and remove the black target when the tiling is done.

This was made with MATLAB 2013a and compiled for Dex 3.5.

You can change the size of the dominant hand circle by changing the value in row 1 and column 3 of the target table. The Show target block is using the columns [4 4 3 3]. This is a simple task which shows how to change the hand feedback from the default white circles.

Compiled for Dex 3.5 with Matlab 2013a.
Technically this could be switched to [4 0 0 3] and it would look the same. If you look at the help for the show target block you can see that for a circle the values here mean: fill color column, stroke color column, stroke width column, radius column.

There are now 2 versions of the task available:
Compiled for Dexterit-E 3.2, matlab 2010a
Compiled for Dexterit-E 3.5, matlab 2010a.
The Dex 3.5 version makes use of the Parameter Table Defn block.

For Dexterit-E 3.5, matlab 2010a click here

The sample position controller task was made for the KINARM Exoskeleton. In order for it to work on a KINARM End-Point robot, you must do two things:
– replace the KINARM_Exo_Position_Controller block with the EP version from our TDK (be sure to keep the Time base the same, at 0.001)
– replace the KINARM_Apply_Loads block with KINARM_EP_Apply_Loads block.

These two changes should enable you to get the position controller to work with a KINARM EP robot.