Hobart and William Smith Colleges

BRAINPOWER + SPIDEY-SENSES

What a fleet of robotic spiders might mean for people living with neuromotor conditions.

BY ANDREW WICKENDEN ‘09

For more than a year, Khairul Islam ’25 and Assistant Professor of Computer Science Chris Fietkiewicz have been designing, programming and building an array of arachnid-like robots. These robo-spiders are connected to neural controllers — devices coded with artificial neurons that mimic a brain system — to better understand the way mind and body function. As they illuminate the complex behavior of neurons and axons, Islam and Fietkiewicz are auguring revolutionary advancements in biomedical engineering.

Arriving at HWS in 2022 “fresh from a two-year robotics binge,” Islam admits that neuroscience “honestly wasn’t my jam. But here’s the plot twist: [Fietkiewicz] was cooking up this epic project, mixing neuroscience with robotics. Seeing my background, he’s like, ‘Wanna join?’ It felt like hitting the jackpot!”

“The serendipity of it all is very striking to me,” says Fietkiewicz. By helping Islam “feed his passion for robotics,” Fietkiewicz has brought his own longtime interests full circle.

“My own love of electronics and robotics goes back to my childhood and kickstarted my first career as an electrical engineer,” he says. “But my current passions are software engineering and computational neuroscience. Now I’ve discovered an exciting way to combine it all, yet I never would have even thought of it without Khairul.”

Fietkiewicz initially saw robotics as an avenue to “study ideas in neurology and biomedical engineering, such as with conditions like paralysis and Parkinson’s disease. But I soon realized that the neuroscience models I study could be excellent for controlling typical robots, too.”

Traditionally, computer algorithms have been used to make robots move. “Humans and animals don’t work that way, and using neural circuits with robots may allow for simpler and more adaptive control methods,” Fietkiewicz explains.

Integrating servomotors and an Arduino, an open- source microcontroller, Islam is constructing physical robots and developing a method for tapping into the sensory feedback system that is built into the servomotors. This feedback system enables more accurate experiments to understand how the brain controls the body. As the technology is refined, it holds immense promise for neuroprosthetics and the treatment of nervous system disorders such as paralysis, Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy.

For Islam — who is enrolled in the Colleges’ Joint Engineering Degree program, a cross-institution partnership with Columbia and Dartmouth — working with Fietkiewicz has been “like jamming with a fellow band member. We vibed on so many levels: our love for learning, our quirks, and our geek-out sessions.... It’s got me dreaming big, thinking maybe a Ph.D. in neurorobotics.”