As they keep saying these days, ‘it’s not science fiction anymore’.

It’s so fascinating I almost forgot what it’s like to make a video where it can take hours to get a few minutes (the video is a little over 3 mins.) and all the failures are edited out. Plus, I haven’t found any information about training both the human users and the robotic dogs/quadrupeds. Does it take minutes? hours? days? more? Can you work with any old robotic dog /quadruped or does it have to be the one you’ve ‘gotten to know’? Etc. Bottom line: I don’t know if I can take what I see in the video at face value.

A March 20, 2023 news item on Nanowerk announces the work from Australia,

The advanced brain-computer interface [BCI] was developed by Distinguished Professor Chin-Teng Lin and Professor Francesca Iacopi, from the UTS [University of Technology Sydney; Australia] Faculty of Engineering and IT, in collaboration with the Australian Army and Defence Innovation Hub.

As well as defence applications, the technology has significant potential in fields such as advanced manufacturing, aerospace and healthcare – for example allowing people with a disability to control a wheelchair or operate prosthetics.

“The hands-free, voice-free technology works outside laboratory settings, anytime, anywhere. It makes interfaces such as consoles, keyboards, touchscreens and hand-gesture recognition redundant,” said Professor Iacopi.

…

A March 20, 2023 University of Technology Sydney (UTS) press release, also on EurekAlert but published March 19, 2023, which originated the news item, describes the interface in more detail,

“By using cutting edge graphene material, combined with silicon, we were able to overcome issues of corrosion, durability and skin contact resistance, to develop the wearable dry sensors,” she said.

A new study outlining the technology has just been published in the peer-reviewed journal ACS Applied Nano Materials. It shows that the graphene sensors developed at UTS are very conductive, easy to use and robust.

The hexagon patterned sensors are positioned over the back of the scalp, to detect brainwaves from the visual cortex. The sensors are resilient to harsh conditions so they can be used in extreme operating environments.

The user wears a head-mounted augmented reality lens which displays white flickering squares. By concentrating on a particular square, the brainwaves of the operator are picked up by the biosensor, and a decoder translates the signal into commands.

The technology was recently demonstrated by the Australian Army, where soldiers operated a Ghost Robotics quadruped robot using the brain-machine interface [BMI]. The device allowed hands-free command of the robotic dog with up to 94% accuracy.

“Our technology can issue at least nine commands in two seconds. This means we have nine different kinds of commands and the operator can select one from those nine within that time period,” Professor Lin said.

“We have also explored how to minimise noise from the body and environment to get a clearer signal from an operator’s brain,” he said.

The researchers believe the technology will be of interest to the scientific community, industry and government, and hope to continue making advances in brain-computer interface systems.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Noninvasive Sensors for Brain–Machine Interfaces Based on Micropatterned Epitaxial Graphene by Shaikh Nayeem Faisal, Tien-Thong Nguyen Do, Tasauf Torzo, Daniel Leong, Aiswarya Pradeepkumar, Chin-Teng Lin, and Francesca Iacopi. ACS Appl. Nano Mater. 2023, 6, 7, 5440–5447 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acsanm.2c05546 Publication Date: March 16, 2023 Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society

This paper is open access.

Comments

For anyone who’s bothered by this, the terminology is fluid. Sometimes you’ll see brain-computer interface (BCI), sometimes you’ll see human-computer interface, or brain-machine interface (BMI) and, as I’ve now found in the video although I notice the Australians are not hyphenating it, brain-robotic interface (BRI).

You can find Ghost Robotics here, the makers of the robotic ‘dog’.

There seems to be a movement to replace the word ‘soldiers’ with warfighters and, according to this video, military practitioners. I wonder how medical doctors and other practitioners feel about the use of ‘practitioners’ in a military context.