Brain Computer Interface Can Help Those With Disabilities

posted on Mar 29 by Snow in the Disability News, Technology, Wheelchair Technology category

These days, there is a wealth of technology that helps individuals with disabilities control wheelchairs as well as interfaces that let them interact with their environment.  There are also interfaces for wheelchairs and other devices that are controlled by brain activity that might soon be able to read and learn a user’s brain activity and work with less input from the user. These brain computer interfaces can help users control wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs.

Typically, a brain computer interface is controlled by three different commands: right, left and a null command or no command that indicates stop or stasis. This no-command is very hard to maintain because it takes intense concentration. This can make these brain computer interfaces hard to use for many persons with physical disabilities that severely limit their movement.

A professor at the Center for Neuroprosthetics, Jose del R Millan, and his research team have been working on a new type of interface that analyzes the user’s brain activity and learns when the subject is relaxed and when the subject is sending a no-command. This new type of brain computer interface, called Shared Control, makes the no-command much more sensitive and requires much less concentration to give.

Milan’s research into how to make Shared Control a reality shows how users of these brain computer interfaces can more easily maneuver around objects and do more precise tasks with their electric wheelchairs, computer interfaces or prosthetic limbs. The new learning brain computer interface can also recognize the user’s patterns of movement and preferences in the interface to make use even easier for those with severe physical disabilities who need these sorts of interfaces to interact with the world.

Professor Millan and his research assistant Michele Tavella revealed their new Shared Control approach to brain computer interfaces at the 2011 American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Washington, DC.

Sources:

http://www.aaas.org/meetings/2011/program/seminars/

http://actu.epfl.ch/news/at-aaas-2011-taking-brain-computer-interfaces-to-t/

http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/News-machine-learns-brain-commands-022211.aspx