The work of Professor Peter Bishay and his students always draws a crowd at the annual Senior Design Project Showcase, which takes place this year on May 1st at the Autodesk Technology Engagement Center.
At the August ribbon cutting for CSUN’s Autodesk Technology Engagement Center, guests touring the state-of-the-art space got an up-close look at mechanical engineering students’ nearly 10-year quest to build a better prosthetic arm. The array of arms and hands displayed are the work of Professor Peter Bishay and dozens of engineering students over the years.
What started with students’ need for a senior project and Bishay’s interest in experimenting with a new “smart” material has become much more than an academic exercise. It resulted in a body of research published in professional journals and a patent pending for a revolutionary controller — all to make a better experience for people using the prosthetics that are often abandoned because they are too heavy or difficult to use.
The work has expanded in recent years to a multi-disciplinary effort with professors and students from the kinesiology and psychology departments. They’re developing an innovative training program, using virtual reality (VR). The goal is to create a game-like environment, easing the pressure of learning a complex device.
Surrounded by examples of prosthetics and photos of each cohort of students, Bishay spoke with CSUN Newsroom about the highlights from the nine-year project, how their research is helping others in the field and how the program has evolved.
How It Started
Bishay was asked in 2017 to provide a senior design project for a group of students — whatever project he liked. At the time, Bishay, a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor, was reading research papers about shape-memory alloy materials that have multi-functionality.
“I was reading a paper about shape memory alloys and how they can be used in prosthetic arms,” he explained. “And then I found out that there are some mechanical engineering students who are 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 in 2017. And our approach at that time was to design a biomimetic, transradial [below the elbow] prosthetic arm.”
Advancing the Technology: Published Research and More
The first cohort, made up of eighteen undergraduate students and Bishay, published a research paper in 2020 on their work using 3D-printed bones connected by flexible joints, all within a silicon “flesh” and actuated via shape memory alloy (SMA) “muscle” wires, rather than using motors to operate the arm.
“This paper [has been] cited multiple times since it was published,” Bishay explained. “Last year, for example, some researchers extended this idea to further develop a design of a hand that has much more degrees of freedom than our hand. Their paper was published in Nature Communications journal, and they cited our paper. So, our ideas benefited a lot of people,” he said.
Smart Prosthetics fifth cohort came up with a new type of controller for the arm in 2021. Typically, prosthetic arms are operated with myoelectric sensors, that are placed on the remaining part of the amputated limb (the residual limb). Bishay noted the drawbacks, which contribute to a high number of patients abandoning use of their prosthetics.
“First of all, if these sensors move left or right, they might not be as accurate since they are supposed to target specific muscle groups,” he said. “Also, those who have no residual limbs at all, or no muscles in the residual limb, cannot use this technology that is currently dominating the market of prostheses.”
The solution? Bishay and students developed a foot controller. Users press two buttons with their toes to perform a variety of functions.
“Whether you one click, double click, long click with the toes, you can do different things with the prosthetic arm fingers,” he explained. “It’s wireless. It’s immediate. and it is very easy.”
Students used an AI tool, called Generative Design, created by Autodesk, within the Fusion computer-aided design software, to engineer new parts for the arm they designed.
“So you can say, for example, I want to put a servo motor here, I want to have four screws here…. you just specify what you want and it will grow the design for you,” Bishay said. The generated design is optimized to have the lightest weight while still being capable of carrying all specified loads with a margin of safety that the user would define.
Student Involvement
Each cohort over the years consisted of 15-16 students. Kurt Trocino, 24, a senior mechanical engineering major, joined the project in 2025. He explained that the students are divided into different sub-teams, including one for the mechanical system, one for the foot-controller system, and one for the haptic feedback system. Trocino said students choose their team, based on what they wish to learn, as well as their strengths.
“My sub-team has a couple of people that are really good with coding. I’m pretty gifted on the mechanical side of things,” Trocino said. “And we have one guy who’s like a jack-of-all-trades, who understands the electrical and the software and the mechanical.”
Trocino is currently a team lead for the foot-controller team. He is one of the presenters on behalf of the team, and will do so again at CSUNPosium, a student conference and showcase featuring students’ scholarly research and creative activity, held this year on April 10. After graduation in May, Trocino will begin work as an assembly manufacturing engineer at Teledyne Technologies, which develops a variety of engineered systems for aerospace, defense and industrial markets.
“For the job interview itself, I had to give a 20-minute presentation on my relevant technical experience, and one of the project examples that I talked about was my contributions to my senior design team,” he said.
What’s Next?
In addition to refining their work on the foot controller and the arm, Bishay is focusing on the multi-disciplinary efforts on virtual reality training. He’s joined forces with three professors from the kinesiology and psychology departments. The team submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation back in 2022, and was awarded a three-year grant to continue the work.
“It’s 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.”
Bishay and his students are also forging ahead on a system to help users “feel” different textures. A team of students is dedicated to designing this haptic feedback system, an innovation that would change how people interact with their prostheses and encourage long-term use.
Bishay’s pride and enthusiasm for the projects shines through as he explains and demonstrates the arms that he and students have developed and shared with researchers over the years.
“Most of the students have the feeling that ‘I want to use my engineering skills to help others,'” he said. “We are coming up with great innovations, integrating virtual reality, AI and all these new technologies in the work that we’re doing, and that’s amazing.”
