Some Potential for Assisted Living

The research in the area of Brain Computer Interfaces to be carried out in this project may also have an impact on Assisted Living. We will try to exploit its results within the Ageing and Assisted Living Network of the University of Essex.

We will use our analogue BCI mouse for this project

In earlier research (partly funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, EPSRC) we developed an analogue Brain Computer Interface for cursor control which we call the Essex BCI Mouse. We have decided to use it as a starting point to build some of the control and navigation applications to be explored in this project.

Here is a short video we produced last year to illustrate the operations of our BCI mouse:

More information on the BCI Mouse project is available here.

Adrian Stoica and the JPL Advanced Robotic Controls Group

General

Here is Adrian's webpage and the Advanced Robotic Controls Group's page. They are interested in:

• Human-robot interfaces and controls using biological signals such as EMG and EEG
• Mobility algorithms, planning and navigation for underwater, surface, and aerial robotic platforms
• Robot intelligence, behavior control, robot learning, cognition and decision making, including distributed reasoning and optimal control for cooperative robots

Interest in Biological Interfaces

In the area of biological interfaces they have Christopher Assad and Michael Wolf with an interest in the area. Also, one of their key projects is entitled Bioelectric Sensor Arrays for Reliable Prosthetic Interface sponsored by DARPA. It is mostly about EMG, but the objectives are similar to those of BCI.

Facilities

They have a number of robotic arenas and a very sophisticated simulator called DARTS.