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Sunday, April 4, 2010

Mind Controlled ROBOT

The Polytechnic Student Research Programme (PSRP) was initiated in 1997 with the objective of nurturing local polytechnic students in R&D through immersion in a scientific and engineering research environment. Students who participate in the programme carry out their final year projects at universities and research institutes, to encourage them to take up a career in R&D upon graduation. This year’s ‘Brain computer Interface platform on Mobile devices’ – a collaboration project between Republic Polytechnic (RP) and the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R) is chosen to be presented during the main PSRP Best Project Award Presentation Ceremony on 10th March held in RP.

Brain Computer Interface (BCI) is a fast growing emergent technology which provides a direct communication between the brain and computer. BCI is often aimed at assisting, augmenting or repairing human cognitive or sensory-motor functions. For example, BCI can allow paralyzed patients to communicate with the outside world and control external devices and thus giving assistance and rehabilitation to the patients. BCI can also be used in the gaming industry to enhance the novelty of the game. However, tradition BCI techniques still require excessive training to the user and bulky equipment to be connected to the the head.

In this project, The School of Engineering (SEG) team has developed a workable prototype to control robot movement using the measurement of brain signal that only uses 2 electrodes to be connected to the forehead. This device does not require much user training and high setup cost. To operate the system, the user just needs to concentrate his thoughts. The brain signals are then captured and translated into commands. If the signals captured are above a certain threshold, the device’s (such as robots or a rehabilitation system) movements can be controlled.
A paper based on this project has been published in the International Symposium on Robotics and Intelligent Sensors (IRIS) held in Nagoya, Japan in March 2010.

Principal Investigators: Dr. Jiang Lijun (RP), Dr. Guan Cuntai, Dr. Zhang Haihong, Mr. Wang Chuan Chu (I2R - an agency of A*STAR)

Student Team Members: Lv Ruilong, Wang Conghao, Wu Mengjiao, Chan Siew Mei and Siti Nurhik Binti Mohamed S.


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