You’ve probably heard of self-propelled wheelchairs, but did you know you can control a wheelchair with just your brain waves?
On Brain Awareness Week, Newspoint is hoping to raise some more awareness on one of the many research efforts of the University of Malta – BrainCon, a collaboration between the Centre for Biomedical Cybernetics and the Department of Systems and Control Engineering.
This ground-breaking project sees the controlling of a wheelchair through the decoding of brain signals recorded using an electroencephalogram (EEG) machine.
To record these signals, a cap with sensors is placed on the head of the participant and the sensors record electrical activity on the scalp. Algorithms are then used to decode the user’s intentions from the brain signals.
EEG signals, by nature, have a lot of noise, which makes them prone to being misclassified - meaning that there is a likelihood the user's intentions will not be decoded properly. Between the subject blinking or moving, and electrical interference from nearby devices, it can be a lot – but the technology being developed at UM is designed to minimise the effect of noise.
“One aim of the BrainCon project is the development of an algorithm which can stabilise the decoding of the brain signals, resulting in less misclassifications and more reliability; and this part of the project has already been implemented”, said Dr Natasha Padfield, one of the engineers working on this project.
This algorithm can be tailored to the individual subject through a reinforcement learning framework, in which the subject executes mental tasks and the algorithm tweaks its parameters to better classify their data.
Currently, the final wheelchair prototype is being polished off – and the intention is to carry out experiments with the physical wheelchair with health participants as well as participants with mobility issues who can transfer to the wheelchair being used as part of the project.
“We have also implemented a simulation of the wheelchair with the intention of carrying out experiments with participants with more significant mobility impairments who cannot use the generic wheelchair available in the lab. This will enable us to obtain feedback from end users who would benefit most from a brain-controlled wheelchair”, Dr Padfield told Newspoint.
More information about BrainCon can be accessed online.
The authors would also like to acknowledge the project: “Setting up of transdisciplinary research and knowledge exchange (TRAKE) complex at the University of Malta (ERDF.01.124)” which is being co-financed through the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund 2014 – 2020.