Wheelchair Makes the Most of Brain Control
From: Technology Review - 09/13/2010
By: Duncan Graham-Rowe

Artificial intelligence improves a wheelchair system that could give
paralyzed people greater mobility. 

A robotic wheelchair combines brain control with artificial intelligence to
make it easier for people to maneuver it using only their thoughts. The
approach, known as "shared control," could help paralyzed people gain new
mobility by turning crude brain signals into more complicated commands. 

The wheelchair, developed by researchers at the Federal Institute of
Technology in Lausanne, features software that can take a simple command like
"go left" and assess the immediate area to figure out how to follow the
command without hitting anything. The software can also understand when the
driver wants to navigate to a particular object, like a table. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/26258/?a=f

Links:
José del Millán
http://people.epfl.ch/jose.millan

Non-Invasive Brain-Machine Interface
http://cnbi.epfl.ch/

Neuroprosthetics: the mind is the pilot (with video)
http://actu.epfl.ch/news/neuroprosthetics-the-mind-is-the-pilot/

Submitted by Jerry Weisman

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Researchers at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne used an
artificial intelligence (AI) approach known as shared control to make it
easier for paralyzed people to maneuver a robotic wheelchair with their
thoughts. The wheelchair uses AI software that is capable of taking a simple
command such as "go left" and assessing the immediate area to determine how
to follow the instructions without hitting anything. The software also is
capable of understanding when the driver wants to navigate around an object
such as a table. Shared control requires the user to think a command only
once, rather than continuously as with electroencephalography, and then the
software handles the rest. "The wheelchair can take on the low-level details,
so it's more natural," says project leader Jose del Millan. The wheelchair
uses two Webcams for detecting and avoiding objects, and drivers can give an
override command if they want to approach rather than navigate around an
object. The prototype system is equipped with 16 electrodes for monitoring
the user's brain activity.