Advertisement ::

Enlarge Cartoon

(videos) Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A robotic wheelchair that combines brain-machine interface with help from computerized cameras, and a tiny laser beamer that can be incorporated into mobile phones, MP3 players and portable computers are two of the latest results of research at EPFL that have the hi-tech world talking.

EPFL is probably best known locally for its academic programmes, as one of two federal polytechnic institutes in Switzerland. The university is an active part of the Lake Geneva region entrepreneurial scene, however, with several successful spinoffs and numerous joint ventures where a significant part of the research is carried out at EPFL.

Wheelchair takes brain-machine interface a step further

EPFL’s neuroprosthetic centre laboratory headed by José de R Millán has developed a robotic wheelchair that uses a system called “shared control” to help severely paralyzed people use brain-machine interface to move their wheelchair, avoiding objects. The prototype is still rudimentary and has not been tested with paralyzed people, the laboratory cautions, but it could eventually significantly improve the life of wheelchair-bound people who have extensive paralysis.

Brain-machine interface is already being used in medicine: computers, prosthetics and other devices, work with technologies that capture signals from the nerves, muscles and the brain. The EPFL robotic wheelchair uses electroencephalography, or EEG to help the patient maneuver his or her wheelchair through thoughts.

Brain signals are turned into computer commands. Key problems include: the process is exhausting for the patient and the risk remains high that the chair will bump into objects in its way.

The control sharing in the new wheelchair is done with two cameras on either side of the chair, using software developed by the laboratory to ensure the chair does not bump into objects as it moves. The chair, in a demo test, is used by the laboratory’s Michele Tavella. EPFL describes his test run:

Michele Tavella, an assistant in Millán’s laboratory at EPFL in Switzerland, sits on a wheelchair that he is controlling only with his mind. While the chair slowly moves around a room, avoiding obstacles along the way, Tavella remains eerily still and concentrated. His thoughts activate specific brain patterns that are recorded by electroencephalography (EEG) using a helmet with electrodes. These patterns are then interpreted by a computer that transmits a command to the chair.

‘When I want to turn left, I imagine moving my left hand,’ says Tavella. ‘And this is very natural and very quick; I can send a command in about a second.’It took Tavella a couple of hours for his brain to adapt to the system, and in turn the system adapts to the particularities of the brain that is controlling the machine—it is a process of mutual apprenticeship between human and machine.”

The next step is to improve the security and precision of the system, according to Tom Carlson, who recently joined the neuroprosthetic centre from Imperial College London. The system requires advanced artificial intelligence—it will need to distinguish between different types of objects: furniture, people, and doorways.

“We are trying to analyze different brain patterns,” says Carlson. “Does the user want to avoid the desk or is it his, and should the chair pull up to it so he can work?”

Mini-beamer ready for market in 2011: automotive and operating theatres lining up

A 1 cm3 laser beamer developed by EPFL spinoff , working with the university’s Maher Kayal Laboratory, will be ready for the market in 2011, with its development phase successfully completed in early September 2010. The beamer will be able to do the work of current desk-top beamers. It has several strong selling points: it retains a bright, high-quality image, is smaller and more easily portable than its larger kin. Numerous applications for the tiny beamer have been identified, thanks to its good compatibility with mobile phones and laptop computers. It can project documents and videos onto a wall just as current fixed beamers do. The size of the image can be adjusted simply by modifying the distance between the beamer and the projection surface; the resulting image remains uniformly clear.

Links to other sites: José del R. Millán’s laboratory, Lemoptix, Maher Kayal Laboratory

Mini-beamer

Shared-control robotic wheelchair