A University of Miami startup earned an award for its augmented reality rehabilitation system designed to help people with amputations regain mobility and combat phantom limb pain.
The three biomedical engineering students behind the SimuStride startup, Ben Broyles, Elissa Cimino, and Aidan Scott-Van Deusen, were recently awarded $100,000 through the University Student Startup Accelerator (USTAAR) competition, accelerating its mission to transform prosthetic rehabilitation with augmented reality.
USTAAR is a university initiative supported by the Alvarez Fund that provides financial and resource support for student design projects, technology transfer, and the commercialization of startup companies. The program aims to cultivate innovation and promote entrepreneurship among students.
“SimuStride began when we recognized a gap in the recovery process for lower-limb amputees,” said Broyles. “After surgery, patients often wait months before receiving a prosthetic leg, which can lead to phantom limb pain and the loss of key motor skills. While early prosthesis training has been shown to help, it is not accessible to most amputees due to both manufacturing limitations and physiological barriers.
“We wanted to bridge that gap and give patients a greater sense of control over their rehabilitation. This led us to develop SimuStride, an augmented reality rehabilitation system that allows amputees to begin practicing prosthetic movement just days after surgery instead of months.”
Using augmented reality, virtual elements are superimposed into the user’s physical environment, where they will see a virtual prosthesis attached to their residual limb. They can control the movement of their virtual leg based on real-time muscle activity captured by an electromyography sleeve.
The student entrepreneurs represented the College of Engineering and the University of Miami at the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) InVenture Prize, an innovation competition where teams of undergraduates representing each ACC university pitch their inventions or businesses to a live audience and a panel of judges. The University of Miami team won the top honor, as well as $30,000 in prizes. Last year, the team also won a $30,000 grant as part of the College of Engineering’s Rothberg Catalyzer Pitch Competition.
“Through these competitions, we secured the funding that allowed us to file a patent, complete product development, and prepare for a pilot study with amputees,” said Cimino.
“We’ve also had the privilege of forming relationships with clinicians in the Miami area who have helped us bring SimuStride into clinics to begin testing with amputees. We are excited to continue growing SimuStride so it can make a real impact in amputee rehabilitation.”
Editor’s note: This story was adapted from materials provided by the University of Miami.
