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Updated: Jul 4, 2026

A Method for Evaluating Timeliness and Accuracy of Volitional Motor Responses to Vibrotactile Stimuli
Published on: August 2, 2016
Real-time control of stepper motors for mechano-sensory stimulation
Carlos Muñiz1, Rafael Levi, Meriem Benkrid
1Grupo de Neurocomputación Biológica, Dpto. de Ingeniería Informática, Escuela Politécnica Superior, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain. carlos.muniz.solaz@gmail.com
Abstract:
Mechanical stimulation is widely used to study sensory encoding in the nervous system of living organisms. The stimulation of mechano-receptor neurons is achieved through a large variety of devices that generate movement or vibration. In many situations, a hard real-time (RT) control of the device (in the millisecond time scale) is needed to produce realistic mechanical stimuli. The real-time control can be required to achieve the desired precision in the device or to implement activity-dependent stimulation protocols that imply the detection of physiological events to drive the stimulus in real time. In this paper we show that real-time software technology can be used to control stepper motors for mechano-receptor stimulation, and to implement artificial closed-loops to address the sensory-motor transformation. We illustrate this using as an example the control of a stepper motor to precisely move gravimetric organs in in vitro preparations.
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