BrainWeb team wins award in Italy

The BrainWeb research team has won the Best Interactive Experience Award at this year’s CHItaly, the 16th Biannual Conference of the Italian SIGCHI Chapter held in Salerno. The award recognises the team’s innovative work on Boggle, a fully featured brain-controlled web browser, designed to make the internet accessible to people with severe motor impairments.

The award was received by Marie Buhagiar and Daniel Calleja, members of the BrainWeb team, alongside Prof. Chris Porter from the Faculty of ICT, Prof. Tracey Camilleri, and Prof. Kenneth Camilleri from the Centre for Biomedical Cybernetics and the Faculty of Engineering respectively.

During the Interactive Experience session at CHItaly, participants had the opportunity to try out this groundbreaking technology and gain first-hand insight into the challenges faced by individuals who cannot use conventional input methods or commercially available assistive technologies.

Boggle is powered by neural responses to visual stimulation (Steady-State Visually Evoked Potentials) and enables users who cannot rely on traditional assistive technologies, such as eye trackers and switch control, to navigate the web freely. Built using low-cost EEG technology, Boggle is open-source and cross-platform, reflecting the team’s commitment to accessibility and inclusivity in assistive technology.

This work is funded by the University of Malta Research Excellence Fund (202403), and contributes to ongoing research and practical innovation in the field of Human-Computer Interaction and assistive technology.

Learn more about the project by visiting the website.