To start our day we headed back to the Bilbao school of engineering on the metro. The first lab we visited was learning more about the Oreka project from Mikel, one of Saioia’s colleagues on this project. In this lab he explained more about the project and showed some of the 3D projection of muscle movements. He also demonstrated other technology which tracks the movement of different muscles in the body, which is very accurate but time consuming. So another aspect of this project is using 3D modeling and AI to understand different movements of muscles in the human body.

The next lab we visited was the Oreka-balance project. This project is essentially the next step of the Oreka project as it has 2 different platforms and more degrees of rotation and freedom. The goal of this project is to mimic the foot pattern of walking to help patients recovering from stroke essentially learn how to walk again. Using parallel kinematics this machine allows for more movement in the ankle and feet to simulate walking. I found this lab interesting because Mikel explained how in many hospitals now the common practice for determining the balance skills of a patient is very subjective. Meaning that depending on the day or the physician proctoring the test, there could be drastically different information about the patient. So with this machine it will lead to much more quantitative and accurate data about these patients, something I really never thought of before.

The final lab we visited shifted gears from a medical perspectives to more robotics. In this lab we learned more about robots whose main goal was to transport goods from one place to another. This experience was especially interesting because all the coding was done through Matlab, which I actually learned in my second semester.

Finally we ended the day by visiting the Hanging Bridge! This bridge was opened in 1893 and was the first bridge of its kind. The design truly is interesting and honestly quite weird but very cool to see in real life. We took the elevator up to the top and walked across the bridge (45 meters high, which is about 147 feet) and took in the amazing views from above. We then used the actual hanging cart to go from one side of the bridge to the other. When we were taking the cart across the bridge it didn’t feel like I was actually moving but I knew I was moving simply because I saw the scenery change. Sadly we will be leaving this hotel early tomorrow because of the soccer match but I am looking forward to seeing Guernica!!