Helen Thomson tells the amazing story of Antonio Melillo, whose spinal cord was severed in a 2011 car crash:
Over in the corner of the lab, Thomas Hoellinger of the Free University of Brussels (ULB) in Belgium is wearing an EEG cap, which measures electrical activity at various points across his scalp. There are several ways he can use it to control the exoskeleton through thought alone – at the moment, the most promising involves wearing a pair of glasses with flickering diodes attached to each lens. … Measurements from this part of the brain can detect whether Hoellinger is concentrating on the left diode or the right. He shows me how concentrating on the left starts the exoskeleton walking, while concentrating on the right stops it. All this happens in under a second.
Melillo isn’t wearing the cap right now, because the team has hit a snag. When the exoskeleton moves, its motors induce electrical noise in the EEG signal, making the readings unreliable. So instead of mind control, Melillo is walking by moving his upper body. As he leans left, a pressure sensor just above his buttock registers the movement and moves the opposite leg of the exoskeleton. He repeats the process on the other side to begin walking. “It’s great, such an amazing sensation,” he says. “Not just walking but even being able to stand upright.”
In the future, researchers hope to be able to control the exoskeleton based on brain activity that “corresponds with the intention of walking” and allows the user to control their pace.
