The mind-powered wheelchair
More than 300,000 people in Europe suffer from a spinal cord injury, and there are 11,000 new injuries per year, mostly affecting and often paralysing young people. Brain strokes, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and spinal muscular atrophy are other causes of paralysis with a neurological basis. These people who are fully paralysed are known as "locked in": while able to perceive the world, to feel and to dream, they are not able to communicate.
The MAIA project aims at developing a non-invasive prosthesis which is able to recognize a person's intention to move a wheelchair in a certain way (primitive motor action). This requires tapping into the person's neural network, interpreting the cerebral signals in real time and then developing a mechanism that could respond to these instructions and steer the wheelchair with a high degree of accuracy. Subjects succeeded in driving a wheelchair in an indoor environment and controlling a robot arm to manipulate things. In addition, some intelligent safety features were added that can handle an emergency situation (e.g. apply a vehicle brake or retract a robot arm) after recognizing the driver's distress.
MAIA's software, linking up the patient's brain to the technology, and its accompanying tools could just make a world of difference for tens of thousands of European citizens in the near future.
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This project was funded by the European Commission's Future and Emerging Technologies research scheme
