脳を使う車いすの実用化に成功(Brain-Powered Wheelchair Shows Real-World Promise)

2022-11-18 テキサス大学オースチン校(UT Austin)

<関連情報>

• https://news.utexas.edu/2022/11/18/brain-powered-wheelchair-shows-real-world-promise/
• https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(22)01690-X

重度四肢麻痺者のためのBMI駆動車いすの操作方法の学習 Learning to control a BMI-driven wheelchair for people with severe tetraplegia

Luca Tonin,Serafeim Perdikis,Taylan Deniz Kuzu,Jorge Pardo,Bastien Orset,Kyuhwa Lee,Mirko Aach,Thomas Armin Schildhauer,Ramón Martínez-Olivera,José del R. Millán
iScience  Published:November 18, 2022
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.10541

Highlights

•Three participants learned to drive a non-invasive BMI-actuated wheelchair

•Direct transfer of learned BMI skills to wheelchair control

•Subject learning and robotic intelligence are key to translational BMI-actuated robots

Summary

Mind-controlled wheelchairs are an intriguing assistive mobility solution applicable in complete paralysis. Despite progress in brain-machine interface (BMI) technology, its translation remains elusive. The primary objective of this study is to probe the hypothesis that BMI skill acquisition by end-users is fundamental to control a non-invasive brain-actuated intelligent wheelchair in real-world settings. We demonstrate that three tetraplegic spinal-cord injury users could be trained to operate a non-invasive, self-paced thought-controlled wheelchair and execute complex navigation tasks. However, only the two users exhibiting increasing decoding performance and feature discriminancy, significant neuroplasticity changes and improved BMI command latency, achieved high navigation performance. In addition, we show that dexterous, continuous control of robots is possible through low-degree of freedom, discrete and uncertain control channels like a motor imagery BMI, by blending human and artificial intelligence through shared-control methodologies. We posit that subject learning and shared-control are the key components paving the way for translational non-invasive BMI.