Research in Brain Controlled Robots

Researchers from USA and Switzerland demonstrated state-of-the-art research in brain controlled robotics at the AAAS 2011 Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

Brain Controlled Telepresence Robot
José del R. Millan, Defitech professor at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, focused on how brain-machine interfaces can help patients limited in mobility to interact with their families. Not only can the patients keep mental control of the machine, but they can also perform daily tasks at the same time.
Out-of-body experience
Olaf Blanke, assistant professor of cognitive neuroscience at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, presented a virtual reality experiment that focused on self-consciousness in connection with body representation.
Brain Controlled Robot Arm Prothesis
Todd Kuiken, director at the Center for Bionic Medicine at Northwestern University and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, explained the neural interface technique “targeted reinnervation.” Glen Lehman, a retired U.S. Army sergeant who lost his arm while in combat in Iraq, accompanied Kuiken. When Lehman thinks about moving the arm, the arms moves.
Brain Controlled Robot Arm
Andrew Schwartz, professor of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh, also presented a way to control an artificial arm, but through the brain’s motor cortex. This would be beneficial for people with spinal cord injuries.

Neural Headset

California based NeuroSky is providing solutions to effectively interface bio-signal information, including brainwaves, to consumer electronic products such as music players that automatically select songs by analyzing the feelings of users, as well as devices to support nursing-care work and to measure learning effects. NeuralSky's MindSet reads brain waves, known as EEG's, and the brain's activity can be utilized by computers and other devices.

NeuroSky plans to demonstrate a brain-controlled video game at the 2008 Tokyo Game Show starting on Oct 9 at the Makuhari Messe convention center in Chiba, near Tokyo. A brain-controlled video game is expected to hit the Japanese market as early as 2009.

The MindSet™ is the first commercially available, "consumer-ready", brainwave-controlled headset for the mass consumer market. The headset reads and interprets different mental states associated with the headset user and transmits that information wirelessly to a variety of platforms. Utilizing NeuroSky's fully-embedded, ThinkGear-EM technology, which manages the brainwave acquisition and interpretation chores, the MindSet communicates equally well with game consoles, PC's and mobile platforms, including cell phones. The MindSet is currently available to NeuroSky's OEM customers.