Device designed to read brainwaves and type
By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 25 March 2010, 23:27 IST   |    14 Comments
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Device designed to read brainwaves and type
Bangalore: Researchers have created a Mind Speller, which is a portable, easy-to-wear, intelligent textual and verbal communications prototype device that will enable people with motor disabilities to communicate. The Mind Speller is an EEG (electro-encephalogram)-based device that interprets brainwaves to spell words and phrases. It detects and interprets P300 brainwaves in the EEG-signals of the person who is selecting characters from a display presenting alternate rows and columns of characters, according to Mumbai Mirror. Researchers from Imec, Holst Centre and the lab of Neuro and Psychophysiology at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven have created this Mind Speller. Brainwaves are often used to communicate but the devices currently available to interpret them are large, expensive and uncomfortable to use. The Mind Speller, on the other hand, uses a portable device, not larger than a matchbox, connected to a cap that contains electrodes located at specific positions on the head to capture the relevant EEG-signals. "The Mind Speller is a generic device that can easily be adjusted to different users. Therefore, it could become a cost-efficient communication solution for people with impairments for whom the existing solutions are too expensive. Moreover, the Mind Speller may aid those patients who are not helped by the existing devices which are driven by motor activity, as the device works on a different principle, using brainwaves to read people's thoughts", says Marc Van Hulle. "With a much simpler design, relying on a power-efficient on-chip implementation, the Mind Speller is the first step in the development of a generic, easy-to-wear, accurate and cost-efficient communication solution for people with motor disabilities," says Chris Van Hoof, Program Director Human at Imec.

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