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Mind-controlled exoskeleton lets paralysed people walk
TWO years ago, Antonio Melillo was in a car crash that completely severed his spinal cord. He has not been able to move or feel his legs since. And yet here I am, in a lab at the Santa Lucia Foundation hospital in Rome, Italy, watching him walk.
Melillo is one of the first people with lower limb paralysis to try out MindWalker – the world's first exoskeleton that aims to enable paralysed and locked-in people to walk using only their mind.
Five people have been involved in the clinical trial of MindWalker over the past eight weeks. The trial culminates this week with a review by the European Commission, which funded the work; the project has been carried out by a consortium of several major universities and companies.
It's the end of a three-year development period for the project, which has three main elements. There is the exoskeleton itself, a contraption that holds a person's body weight and moves their legs when instructed. People learn how to use it in the second element: a virtual-reality environment. And then there's the mind-reading component.
Over in the corner of the lab, Thomas Hoellinger of the Free University of Brussels (ULB) in Belgium is wearing an EEG cap, which measures electrical activity at various points across his scalp. There are several ways he can use it to control the exoskeleton through thought alone – at the moment, the most promising involves wearing a pair of glasses with flickering diodes attached to each lens.
Each set of diodes flashes at a different frequency in the wearer's peripheral vision. The light is processed by an area of the brain called the occipital cortex. Measurements from this part of the brain can detect whether Hoellinger is concentrating on the left diode or the right. He shows me how concentrating on the left starts the exoskeleton walking, while concentrating on the right stops it. All this happens in under a second.
Melillo isn't wearing the cap right now, because the team has hit a snag. When the exoskeleton moves, its motors induce electrical noise in the EEG signal, making the readings unreliable.
So instead of mind control, Melillo is walking by moving his upper body. As he leans left, a pressure sensor just above his buttock registers the movement and moves the opposite leg of the exoskeleton. He repeats the process on the other side to begin walking. "It's great, such an amazing sensation," he says. "Not just walking but even being able to stand upright."
Two days after my visit, the team identified flickering frequencies that are less affected by the mechanical noise and filmed a researcher controlling the exoskeleton with his mind alone.
The team plans to spend another five years refining MindWalker with an eye towards building a commercial product. "We're going to make it more lightweight and smooth out the movements," says Jeremi Gancet of Space Application Services in Zaventem, Belgium, a deputy coordinator on the project, "and possibly even incorporate it all into a pair of pants to make it a little less 'Robocop'."
They also want to ditch the glasses with the flashing diodes. A team led by Guy Chéron at ULB has identified the brain activity that corresponds with the intention of walking. This activity occurs about a second before you actually move and can be identified by EEG signals from the motor cortex. The team can even distinguish between the intention to walk quickly or slowly.
The creation of an algorithm that can recognise these signals reliably opens up the tantalising possibility that much more intuitive walking control could be given both to people who are paralysed and to those who are completely locked-in, unable to move even their eyes.
After some tentative first steps, Melillo is looking more confident. He won't be swapping his wheelchair for a MindWalker just yet, but hopefully one day. "It's great finally being able to look people in the eye," he says.
Clarification: Since this article was first published on 4 June 2013, a reference to the MindWalker consortium has been added.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Get your move on"
Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23640
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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