Monday, Sep 10, 2007
Now, a Motorized Wheelchair That is Controlled by Thought
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A US company has demonstrated a motorized wheelchair that moves when the operator thinks of particular words.
The wheelchair works by intercepting signals sent from the brain to the voice box, even when no sound is actually produced.
Ambient, the company behind the wheelchair says, the gadget could prove a boon for people with spinal injuries or neurological problems like cerebral palsy or motor neurone disease.
It could also help people operate computers and other equipment despite having serious problems with muscle control, it said.
However, it added, the system would only work if a person is able to control his/her larynx, or voice box.
Ambient co-founders Michael Callahan and Thomas Coleman said the system worked via a sensor-laden neckband, which eavesdropped on electrical impulses sent to larynx muscles.
It then relayed the signals, via an encrypted wireless link, to a nearby computer, which decoded them, matching them to a series of pre-recorded "words" determined during training exercises, they said.
These "words" could then be used to direct the motorised wheelchair, they added.
Callahan and Coleman, who also developed the larynx control system, Audeo, said the words could also be sent to a speech synthesiser, allowing a paralysed person to "speak" out loud.
"Recent refinements to the algorithms used may make it possible to interpret whole sentences thought out by the user. This could potentially restore near-normal speech to people who have not spoken for years," they said.
Niels Birbaumer from Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen, Germany, who is developing similar systems for use by stroke victims, said though measuring brain waves using an electrode cap or implants placed directly in the brain has been used to control computers and wheelchairs before, little evidence has been found that either method reproduced either single words or continuous speech.
"Recording from outside the brain like this may the only way to do it. Everyone working on brain-computer interfaces wants to be able to identify words. If this works reliably I would be very impressed, it is very hard to record signals from nerves through the skin," said Birbaumer.
"I have some patients not even able to send nerve signals to the muscles in their face. In those cases you have to try and interface with the brain," New Scientist quoted him as saying. (© ANI)
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