Advances continue to be made in technology combining electronics into the nervous system to help paralyzed people, giving new hope in the bioengineering study. Many studies have been conducted on integrating technology with medicine, but this latest research led by Matthew Willsey from the University of Michigan uses AI algorithm to map the neural signals to specific imagined fingers to control virtual drone. Showing 6 times improvement in the flight performance as it takes signal reading directly from motor neurons rather than EEG.
His team developed a system where each movement of these fingers represents a certain action, which then controls the virtual quadcopter (drone) on the computer. This experiment explored the capabilities of the BCIs and succeeded in controlling complex gaming simulations. The team expresses that even though it was conducted in a constrained environment, the scope of elaborating this experiment into real life can be expected, and also planning for future improvements.
This is an exciting news to the community as this may improve how people with paralysis interact with the world, making their day-to-day life much smoother and easier.
