Mind Over Mechanics
It's a staple of science fiction: people who can control objects with their minds. At the University of Minnesota, a new technology is turning that fiction into reality. Thanks to the work of biomedical engineering professor Bin He and his team, this flying robot takes its orders from a person's thoughts.
The technology, pioneered by He, may someday allow people robbed of speech and mobility by neurodegenerative diseases to regain function by controlling artificial limbs, wheelchairs, or other devices. And it’s completely noninvasive: Brain waves (EEG) are picked up by the electrodes of an EEG cap on the scalp, not a chip implanted in the brain.
A report on the technology has been published in the Journal of Neural Engineering.
“My entire career is to push for noninvasive 3-D brain-computer interfaces, or BCI,” says He, a faculty member in the College of Science and Engineering. “[Researchers elsewhere] have used a chip implanted into the brain’s motor cortex to drive movement of a cursor [across a screen] or a robotic arm. But here we have proof that a noninvasive BCI from a scalp EEG can do as well as an invasive chip.”
To read more, please visit the source: UMNews
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