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Science

Mind-Controlled Wheelchair 50

Posted by michael from the road-rage dept.
carnun writes "New Scientist is reporting on the design of a new skull cap control mechanism that could lead to the supplanting of implanted electrodes for controlling wheel chairs. The new non-invasive method has been used to control a simple wheeled robots and could have lots of psychological benefits for quadruplegics."
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Mind-Controlled Wheelchair More

Mind-Controlled Wheelchair

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  • Next a car. It's not a flying car (which we are all still waiting on) but this has some seriously cool potential.

    Let's hope the auto industry takes note.

    (and it's good news for those that are wheelchair bound too!)
    • No, no, no!!!

      Like it's not dangerous enough on the roads with the crazy people talking on their cell phones, shaving or putting on makeup, yelling at the kids in the back seats, etc. (often all these at the same time). You can just imagine what could happen.

      *A soccer mom with three kids in the backseat is talking on her ultra-new cell phone.*
      "Yeah, Cindy, you take a left on..." *30-ton SUV drifts to the left lane nearly taking out a person next to her.*
      "... Killdeer Street, then a right..." *The SUV sw
      • Ya, seriously, it'll work until they test it.. and realize most people are morons... Just because they have the technology doesn't mean anything.. this reminds me when a certain video game used to have a digicam for highscores (this was in the 80s, so it would've been cool..) it worked wondrously, until the next day, someone dropped their pants in front of the camera. End of story.
    • It's much more likely that cars will evolve to drive themselves, not to a point where we control them with our thoughts, which would not be as safe.
  • Professor Xavier comes to mind?

  • Timmah! (Score:4, Funny)

    by floydigus ( 415917 ) on Thursday July 24, 2003 @10:42AM (#6522258)
    timmah. Timmah!
  • I sure hope they build a good pornfilter into this device, you know, men thinking of sex every xx minutes, could play some havoc with those delicate electronics, relais, the gearbox....
  • I first parsed that as "Mind-controlled Weather" and went WTF?

    And then it passed....
  • ...And it will blink a light for communication. Once for "yes," and twice for "no" (or is it once for "no," and twice for "yes?).

  • Help - I want to get off (Score:5, Funny)

    by henrygb ( 668225 ) on Thursday July 24, 2003 @10:54AM (#6522399)
    At the moment the user can choose between three different commands: for example, "turn left", "turn right" and "move forward".

    "Stop" might be a useful upgrade.

  • ... you don't drink and drive!
    • Operating a motorized wheelchair while impaired is actually against the law (at least in Canada). People can and have been arrested for it.

      Course, it would probably be worst in a wheelchair controlled by your mind. You'd think about vomitting and the wheelchair would tip forward and vomit you into the street. :]
      • I hope thats not a law in the US, I would think that the ACLU would pounce on something like that. A law like that would basically prevent people confined to wheelchairs (electric ones at least) from drinking.

        If it is a law does that New York City law about confiscating people's cars apply?

  • Wow (Score:2)

    by gazbo ( 517111 )
    Y'know, it could've been, like, mind controlling wheelchairs, and that'd totally freaky, 'cause I'd be all like "They're controlling my thoughts! Aieee!".

    Whoa. That's like mobility Daleks or shit like that.

  • Bah, that's nothing. (Score:5, Funny)

    by DeadVulcan ( 182139 ) <dead@vulcan.pobox@com> on Thursday July 24, 2003 @11:54AM (#6523061)

    Why don't people work on making more of Stephen Hawking's exoskeleton [theonion.com]?

  • Firefox and Otaku dreams (Score:4, Funny)

    by MagikSlinger ( 259969 ) on Thursday July 24, 2003 @12:06PM (#6523231) Homepage Journal
    In the novel that the movie was based on, the Firefox was developed from a project to create a mind-controllable wheelchair. So how long before we get jet fighters we can control with our minds?

    Then it can advance to jet fighters that transform and can only be controlled by mind-control and a giant mega-fortress with a really annoying J-Pop singer.

    THEN, we can have giant Evangellion robot warriors that you synch with that has a 1 in 10 chance of killing you (or driving you insane) just in time for the Second Impact!!

    *Phew*

    I think I'll go lie down now... :-}
    • AFAIK, there has already been some research in mind-controlled jet fighter area...

      Not in steering systems like this wheelchair, but the actual firing mechanism, you might save whole second if time from though to actually pressing the trigger could be eliminated.
  • I have always wondered how the ninja was supposed to be able to know where you were going ot move and what you were going to do. Now we know... he can read the patterns in the air and see what your brain wants to do. You know this gives big brother a whole new dimention to play in.
  • So that i can have my hands free to do... ... other things :-)
  • Of course Davros from Dr. Who (http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/alien/davros. shtml)
    developed a variant of his mind control wheelchair to host what the kaleds race would mutate into after their protracted exposure to nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) warfare agents, creating the Daleks.

    This is particularly disturing in that he as more than a passing resemblance to Rumsfield.

  • I wonder what happens... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by stupidsocialscientis ( 689586 ) on Thursday July 24, 2003 @04:32PM (#6526415)
    when the user dreams they are moving? Similar neural areas may become active, and thus activate the wheelchair. If so, could an add-on be used to detect REM activity and incapacitate the device when the user is sleeping?

  • sounds cool (Score:2, Insightful)

    by chloroquine ( 642737 )
    This seems to be one of those technologies that has a good first impression but the more you think about it, the more you see the problems. Of course that's what I said about cloning an entire organism about ten years ago.

    Getting a hig quality EEG from a moving person who is presumably travelling over uneven ground sounds like it might be a touch difficult. Are there other brain visualization techniques that are small and portable and are associated with phenomenon that people can consciously control?

    • as a psychologist - I have seen software that is designed to train people to elicit a certain type of brain wave pattern (e.g., beta, alpha). These devices use fairly crude caps. I suppose the wheelchair-makers may be using broad patterns such as these, rather than very neuroanatomically localized patterns, which I believe would be more subject to increased artifact as a function of movement.
      • But don't I remember something about "biofeedback" where people were trained to alter heart rate and body surface temperature at will? Could this be also used to control a machine? or is that not enough variables and not rapid enough a response time?

        I'm probably also not thinking about the kinds of disabilities the people involved might have.

        • probably the most common bio-feedback that can change quickly and be monitored crudely and quickly is galvanic skin response (GSR). this is a measure of the conductivity of your skin, and is measured pretty easily with two electrodes to assess resistance. i bet that might be "malleable" enough and respond quickly enough. good thought

  • ...takes on a whole new meaning.

    Whoa!

    Imagine the crazy dreams that might make your wheelchair go...well...crazy. Imagine the safety implications if there were a cliff or something nearby.

    Except this time, you don't wake up before you hit the ground. Or at least you hit the ground when you wake up. Hrm. I'm confused.

  • Could this be used to replace the PC mouse and point'n'click? The article talks about detecting a person's desire to move in a particular direction by monitoring alpha brain waves. This is surely something that could be easily applied to mouse control.

    Differentiating between EEG patterns could be advanced by neural network based analysis.

    The possibilities are endless.

    BTW, the Swiss institute mentioned in the article also analysed a Bin Laden tape and decided it was fake.

  • if I get blasted with Delta rays do I get one of these cool chairs plus a trip to Talos IV for a date with my favorite green Orion slave-girl? Beep once for yes!
  • Now what if someone get scared while driving such chair in the middle of the crowd and the chair starts uncontrollably rolling back and forth hitting people?

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