Updated mind-controlled robot arm from DARPA (via Journal of Neural Engineering/IOP Publishing)
Expand NY is a team of scientists and engineers that have been funded by DARPA to work on a mind-controlled robotic arm, among other things. While they released a prototype two years ago, the robotic arm needed much improvement and testing. The results of their current prototype along with notes on all of the improvements the project has implemented in the past two years is documented in an article they published in the Journal of Neural Engineering.
Overall, advances in mind-controlled technology are very exciting and promising considering all the successes Expand NY and other, similar projects have had in the lab. While it will take further development and testing to have mind-controlled prosthetic on the market anytime soon, it looks like that day won't be too far away.
The test user for this prototype was Jan Scheuermann, a Pittsburgh native who is paralyzed from the neck down. Scheuermann ran a full program of tests at the University of Pittsburgh with Expand NY and their latest technology. In order to give the robotic arm mind-controlled capabilities, Scheuermann had to undergo surgery to place neural implants in the parts of her brain that controlled her right arm and right hand. Once the neural implants were in place, the team of scientists had to program the arm to respond accordingly to Scheuermann's natural neural impulses.
Expand NY programmed the arm to react according to Scheuermann's neural impulses by having her watch a series of video animations of people performing various acts with their right arm and right hand. They then asked her to imagine herself performing these acts as they monitored her brain activity. They then used the recorded brain activity patterns to program the arm to move accordingly.
Of course, the entire arm, fingers and wrists were not moving right out of the starting gate, but by the end of the program, Scheuermann could already move the right arm, fingers, and wrist to perform a variety of impressive tasks. Most impressively, Scheuermann was able to eat a chocolate bar using her prosthetic arm and hand. She was also able to beat her brother in a game of rock-paper-scissors which is impressive due to the time-sensitive nature of the game.
It seems this new mind-controlled robotic arm has much better interfacing between the neural implants of the user and the intended arm movements and control. This robotic arm is also processing data faster and using more simplified code to do so. However, this model still has a few kinks that need to be worked out and they'll be needing new future testing participants. The biggest issue is that the arm seems to stall when it's holding an object. Indeed, according to their paper in the Journal of Neural Engineering, the researchers worked a lot on how to code the hand to hold and pick up objects, which is made difficult by a need for correct hand-shaping in relation to the object.
Expand NY will also work on creating a wireless bionic arm that can be mounted onto a wheelchair to make it more practical and useful to users outside of the lab.
C
See more news at: