A Wheelchair That Reads Your Mind From: Wired News - 01/29/2007 By: Emmet Cole Researchers in Spain are creating a robotic wheelchair that can be controlled by its user's thoughts alone. While current brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) that work with electroencephalogram electrodes (EEGs) have been physically plugged into the brain, powered by large immobile computers, and known for producing crude signals, the "Biomedical Evaluation Of Robots to Assist Human Mobility" project seeks to create a non-invasive BCI powered by mobile computers that can understand simple commands such as "stop," "go," "left," and "right." "You're not going to be using EEGs to control a robotic arm to play the piano or anything," says Case Western Reserve University's Department of Biomedical Engineering professor Dawn Taylor, who is not involved in the project but has knowledge of the technology being used. "But you can certainly turn right and left and stop and go using that sort of signal." The Spanish Ministry of Education and Science says it hopes the technology could one day provide mobility to those with limited motor capabilities as a result of injury, disability, or old age. Two 800 MHz computers mounted on the wheelchair are being used to process the BCI readings and transmit commands to the wheels. About a week of training is needed for the software to adapt to a user's thought patterns for basic commands. "The important issue is to have a good selection of the mental tasks for each user, so that they produce discriminable EEG patterns," says University of Zaragoza researcher Javier Minguez. Read the entire article at: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/medtech/0,72580-0.html Links: Brain Computer Interfaces http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71364-0.html This Is a Computer on Your Brain http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71364-0.html Transforming Thoughts Into Deeds http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,61889-0.html Patients Put on Thinking Caps http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,66259-0.html Now That's Using Your Brain http://www.wired.com/news/technology/medtech/0,70568-0.html Your Thoughts Are Your Password http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70726-0.html I Think, Therefore I Communicate http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,59737-0.html Mind Control http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/brain.html Javier Minguez http://webdiis.unizar.es/~jminguez/ Spanish Ministry of Education and Science http://www.mec.es/ Dawn Taylor http://bme.case.edu/faculty_staff/taylor/ Think-a-Move http://www.think-a-move.com/