BCI Exoskeleton

Thank you very much.

It's very nice to meet you.

So you have a big project that just went out into the world in the publishing.

And I want to ask you about one of the terms to start with.

What is a brain-computer interface?

So a brain-computer interface is an intermediary device that basically facilitates the communication between the brain and the outside.

And in this case, the outside normally is a computing device, a machine which is capable of doing some calculation, computation, and processing.

So brain-computer interface, therefore, facilitates this kind of midway communication between the brain, what is going on in the brain, brain waves, neural waves, if you will, and the outside computing device.

So in this case, it's connected to a robotic exoskeleton that I believe for the first time has feedback where the sensing is going both directions.

How might this device help people with spinal cord injuries?

As you rightfully mentioned, in our brain machine interface project, that computing device or the external device is the exoexceleton.

And the exoexceleton is really, for the audience, is a device attached to the leg that helps kind of enable gait function or walking on people who have some problem walking, right? In particular, for example, patients with spinal cord injury.

What is the job of this brain-computer interface device? What it does is that it provides access to the brain, what brain thinks.

When we think about brain thinking, essentially it means that there are some brain waves that is corresponding to the brain activity.

We call this neural signals.

So any kind of electrochemical activities in the brain can easily be translated to what we call meaningful time domain waveforms.

So the waveforms that essentially look like the random noise that goes up, down in time.

The brain computer interface device that we explored and developed is getting these signals from the brain, and then after some basic processing that involves amplifying this signal, because the signal might be weak, then it passes through a processing unit.

The job of this processing unit is to basically process and better understand this brain signal, which our device sends and picked up.

And when I say understand, it really means that in the case of a person walking, this signal means, for example, the attributes of walking that is hidden in the brain signal and can be extracted from the brain signal.

More precisely, any kind of action that is done, is taken place, in our case, walking, or for example, if you have like arm move, arm movement, walking, occurs because of the close relationship that is existent between the brain and that organ.

In our case, for example, walking, organ means feet and leg.

Therefore, it makes sense that if I intend to do walking and if I start up walking, that basically means that there might be some activities, differences in the so-called brain signal.

For example, brain signal is like this.

And then when I start thinking about walking, then the brain signal changes.