Human 2.0 will cover the principles underlying current and future technologies for cognitive, emotional, social, and physical augmentation. Topics include robotic exoskeletons and orthoses, limb prostheses, neural implants, social-emotional prostheses, and cognitive prostheses.

Students will learn scientific models of the human body from various fields (e.g., biomechanics, neuroscience, psychology) including their application in augmentation technology design for persons of both regular and irregular physiology. The course includes the completion of a semester project focused on human subjects testing with associated publication-quality paper.

Enrollment limited.

Direct any questions to human2.0@mit.edu.

Project

Students will work throughout the semester to complete a self-selected project that focuses on some form of human augmentation. Students will be responsible for building their project, conducting an experiment, and reporting on the results in the form of a final presentation as well as a final paper of publication quality. Examples of past project topics include: Social networking prostheses, memory augmentation, running/walking augmentation, EMG control, sports exoskeletons, rehabilitation orthoses, sleep augmentation, visual augmentation, auditory augmentation.

Tentative syllabus

Course Intro + Intro to Muscle Mechanics and Gait (Hugh Herr)

Leg Prostheses (Hugh Herr)

Orthoses and Exoskeletons (Hugh Herr)

Human Subject Testing & Experimental Design (MIT COUHES Office)

Peripheral Neural Interfaces (Hugh Herr)

Central Neuroprostheses for Sensing and Stimulation (Deblina Sarkar)

Optogenetics and Expansion Microscopy (Edward Boyden)

Memory Prostheses (Steve Ramirez)

Embodiment and New Identities (Hugh Herr)