Toyota Demonstrates Brain Control of Wheelchair

An anonymous reader tips us that researchers at Toyota have developed a brain-machine interface system that allows for control of a wheelchair using thought. The system processes brain thought patterns (such as the thought of moving one's left foot) and can turn them into left, right, and forward movements of the wheelchair with a delay as short as one-eighth of a second. That's a big improvement over existing systems, which can take as long as several seconds to analyze and react to the user's thoughts. "The system has an emergency stop that can be activated by the user puffing his cheeks. The BMI adjusts itself over time to the characteristics of each driver's brainwaves. If a person dedicates three hours a day to using the system, the BMI can reach 95% accuracy in a week, researchers said."

Comments

Re:95% accuracy is pretty awesome.

[fractoid]

I was going to say just this. 95% sounds good until you start thinking about it - but that means that in every hour of usage, the chair is going to spend three full minutes misbehaving. I can't find exact statistics or standards for conventional electric wheelchairs but I'd be amazed if the mean time before failure is measured in minutes rather than months or years.

That's nearly perfect.

[zip0nada]

Oh, good, I stand a relatively good chance of being able to stop myself before rolling into traffic. Although, to be fair, I'd much rather face a 5% error rate than have no control at all. Not to mention that's only one week of training.

It's called the Audeo

[Ossk]

This was done a few years ago in a different way: you wear an electronic collar which eavesdrops on the nerves running to your vocal chords. These signals are then decoded into words. Finally, some words, like "forward", are interpreted as intentions to move. The system is called the Audeo.

Official site: http://www.theaudeo.com/
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyQv61899HE
Article: http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/6130

meh.. post some decent articles kdawson

[nawcom]

Okay, i'll look like some troll already mods, but give me a second.

I just feel that this is just another promo ad that gets sent to tech sites from some publicists to get the title of the technology spread with their name on it.

this article, (06/29/2009)
Brain controlled wheelchair developed at University of South Florida (02/11/2009)
from European scientists, Brain Controlled Wheelchair (05/11/2008)
Ambient Tech creates brain controlled wheelchair (09/06/2007)
Brain controlled wheelchair from spanish inventor (01/29/2007)
University of Electro Communications in Japan develop brain controlled wheelchair (08/11/2006)

Yeah I'll stop. Mod me down. I just think it's odd that this stuff gets press like it's something brand new. Perhaps sell us by saying its much better? Something. Please.

Stephen Hawking

[PlantPerson]

This is slightly off topic, but I hope this technology develops fast enough to get Stephen Hawking some great things before he dies. I'd love to see him given something that would allow him to type letters just by thinking of them.

Re:95% accuracy is pretty awesome.

[Crazyswedishguy]

Granted, 95% accuracy isn't amazing, especially in situations where you can't afford to make a mistake. This being said, I'm pretty sure that such a sophisticated device could easily implement some collision/stair avoidance (for instance).

I know I've tried putting my roomba on top of a table (or tried to make it go off the stairs), but it just stops when it gets to an edge. It also stops when its bumpers hit a wall, by the way. I don't know how much this wheelchair would cost, but I wouldn't be surprised if you could add the cost of a couple roombas without making a significant dent in the price.

Re:Captain Pike calling...

[arb phd slp]

You don't need a "no" response, actually. You can communicate quite well with just a "Yes". (Here is where I explain all of the humor out of the Capt. Pike joke.) The computer can automatically scan through a series of options and the user can activate when it gets to the option he or she wants. If no response, it simply assumes No and moves on.

If you want to see examples of this system at work, check out Jean-Dominique Bauby's system in the film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, where it scans the letters of the alphabet in order of frequency (in French in his case).

Stephen Hawking uses a row-column system that scans through dictionaries of whole words large blocks at a time, each selection narrowing down the options to the word, so that he only has to resort to spelling things out for infrequently occurring words.

This Article Should Be Called...

[manoftin]

... the future of gaming. We will look back at these stories and realise this was where it all started...