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Mind Walker

Monday, April 29, 2013 | 09:43 | 2 Comment(s)

Mind-controlled exoskeleton

Many people had suffered major spinal injuries and prevented them from walking again after accident. These people may end up confined to a wheelchair for the rest of their lives. Thus, taking an initiative from this issue, European Union-funded researchers have been developing a mind-controlled robotic exoskeleton in order to give second chances to disables.

Retrieved from Robaid.com

“All injury leaves pain in the memory except the greated injury, that is death, which kills memory with life.” – Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519).

With injury comes the inevitable physaical, emotional, and economic costs, as well as loss of time and normal function. Today, injury is considered as one of the serious health problems and became challenges faced by today scientists.

In article posted on 8^th March 2013 in Hi Tech & Innovation magazine expose us to this current technology invention of exoskeleton. The system used is based on innovative brain-neural-computer interface (BNCI) tecchnology which combined with a light-weight exoskeleton attached to user’s legs and a virtual reality environment for training. It also provides applications for habilitation of stroke victims and in assisting astronaunts rebuild muscle mass after prolonged periods in space.

But by bypassing the spinal cord entirely and routing brain signals to a robotic exoskeleton, they should be able to get back on their feet. That is the ultimate goal of researchers working in the 'Mind-controlled orthosis and VR-training environment for walk empowering' (Mind Walker) project.

'Mind Walker was proposed as a very ambitious project intended to investigate promising approaches to exploit brain signals for the purpose of controlling advanced orthosis, and to design and implement a prototype system demonstrating the potential of related technologies,' explains Michel Ilzkovitz, the project coordinator at Space Applications Services in Belgium.

The team's approach relies on an advanced BNCI system that converts electroencephalography (EEG) signals from the brain, or electromyography (EMG) signals from shoulder muscles, into electronic commands to control the exoskeleton.

The Laboratory of Neurophysiology and Movement Biomechanics at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) focused on the exploitation of EEG and EMG signals treated by an artificial neural network, while the Foundation Santa Lucia in Italy developed techniques based on EMG signals modelled by the coupling of neural and biomechanical oscillators.

The BNCI signals have to be filtered and processed before they can be used to control the exoskeleton. To achieve this, the Mind Walker researchers fed the signals into a 'Dynamic recurrent neural network'(DRNN), a processing technique capable of learning and exploiting the dynamic character of the BNCI signals.

'This is appealing for kinematic control and allows a much more natural and fluid way of controlling an exoskeleton,' Mr Ilzkovitz says.

The team adopted a similarly practical approach for collecting EEG signals from the user's scalp. Most BNCI systems are either invasive, requiring electrodes to be placed directly into brain tissue, or require users to wear a 'wet' capon their head, necessitating lengthy fitting procedures and the use of special gels to reduce the electrical resistance at the interface between the skin and the electrodes. While such systems deliver signals of very good quality and signal-to-noise ratio, they are impractical for everyday use.

The Mind Walker team therefore turned to a 'dry' technology developed by Berlin-based eemagine Medical Imaging Solutions: a cap covered in electrodes that the user can fit them, and which uses innovative electronic components to amplify and optimize signals before sending them to the neural network.

'The dry EEG cap can be placed by the subject on their head by themselves in less than a minute, just like a swimming cap,' Mr Ilzkovitz says.

This is a very good invention that allow paralyzed people to walk again simply by thinking about it. Wish we could have this in Malaysia soon!

2 Comments:

Nadia Aisyah said...: All the countries should have this kit. I am a special education teacher to be.. how important this stuff for children to improve their skills; 24 May 2013 at 06:03
Unknown said...: Thank you for commenting. This technology is very new to us. Right now the price of this item should be too high for the public. They should came up with something more affordable so that every disable people may have the chance to have the taste of walking again. Perhaps in nearest time. Insyaallah.; 24 May 2013 at 06:36