The Brain Powered Wheelchair

The Brain Powered Wheelchair – There have been plenty of considerations for individuals who retain upper-body mobility, but not every wheelchair user is alike. Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) have been making great strides in the world of neuroprosthetics, continuing to work on a wheelchair that is powered by the user’s brain. Think and the darn thing moves. The prototype currently looks like the bulky electric wheelchairs of old, but it’s only a matter of time before this thing finally hits the market and gets streamlined.

A team of researchers led by Professor José del R. Millán at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland has developed a wheelchair that can be controlled via a Brain-Computer Interface. The focus of their research is on the direct use of human brain signals to control devices and interact with the environment. They are involved in a large set of complementary projects, which balance the development of prototypes —where robust real-time operation is critical— and the exploration of new principles.

Here we see a subject testing out navigating the environment in a wheelchair by thought alone. The subject thinks of either moving their right or left arm to generate left or right movement. What is interesting is that in order to perform a particular task one doesn’t have to think about that task, instead they can think about whatever is associated with that task. Essentially the computer can be trained to interpret whatever thought a subject wants to correlate with a desired outcome. Nifty!

Manufactured by: CNBI

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