First came the joystick. Then came the motion-sensing Wii remote. What´s next? Sensors and mobiles are opening up a new world: thought control.
Co-founded by Allan Snyder, a neuroscientist and former University of Cambridge research fellow, Emotiv says its EPOC headset features 16 sensors that push against the player’s scalp to measure electrical activity in the brain – a process known as electro-encephalography. In theory, this allows the player to spin, push, pull, and lift objects on a computer monitor, simply by thinking. “There will be a convergence of gesture-based technology and the brain as a new interface – the Holy Grail is the mind” says Snyder.
Last month the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), an arm of the US Defence Department, said it had awarded a $6.7 million contract to Northrop Grumman to develop “brainwave binoculars”. The binoculars use scalp-mounted sensors to detect objects the user might have seen but not noticed – in other words, the computer is used as a kind of brain-aid, giving the user superhuman vision.
Explaining the technology, Dr Robert Shin, an assistant professor of neurology and ophthalmology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said: “There is a level where the brain can identify things before it ever makes it to the conscious level. Your brain says, ‘it may be something’, but it might not realize that it is something that should rise to the conscious level.”
Another defence contractor, Honeywell, has been working on a similar technology known as “augmented cognition” to help intelligence analysts to operate more effectively. Based on the same principle as the binoculars, it has been shown to make analysts work up to seven times faster. It can also detect when they are getting tired. In other tests, soldiers have been kitted out with headsets that detect “brain overload”, allowing commanders to know if they can process new information under the extreme pressures of the battlefield.
Motion capture, or Mocap, is a technique for digitally recording movement. Are we playing games her? Originally used as an analysis tool for biomechanics, mocap is now successfully employed in a wide variety of sectors including mHealth related applications.
Movement is captured through the placement of sensors (or markers) on or near each joint of the body. As each joint moves the positions or angles between the markers are recorded. Software records the, angles, velocities, accelerations and impulses, providing an accurate digital representation of the movement.
Realtime data from mocap enables the diagnosis of problems or enhancement of performance in the arenas of biomechanics and sports. It can also assist in the design of products or buildings when applied to the field of engineering or ergonomics. Animazoo distinguishes three types of Mocap´s.
Gyroscopic systems use tiny inertial gyroscopes that are attached to a body. These directly record the rotations of the body parts. The rotational data is transmitted by radio to a receiver unit where it is mapped instantly to a skeleton in order that the data can be visualized in realtime. These systems perform with no lag in realtime, producing incredibly accurate data. The data retains nuance even with fast moves.
Mechanical systems track body joint angles directly and are often referred to as exo-skeleton mocap systems, due to the way the sensors are attached to the body. A person attaches the skeletal-like structure to their body and as they move so do the articulated mechanical parts, measuring the performer’s relative motion. Mechanical motion capture systems are realtime, relatively low-cost and usually wireless. Movement is captured through the placement of sensors (or markers) on or near each joint of the body. As each joint moves the positions or angles between the markers are recorded. Software records the, angles, velocities, accelerations and impulses, providing an accurate digital representation of the movement.
Optical systems triangulate the 3D position of a marker between one, two or more cameras that have been pre-calibrated for distance to provide overlapping projections. Tracking a large number of markers or multiple performers is accomplished by the adding more cameras. These systems can be expensive to buy, require technical expertise to operate and are studio based. They have a relatively small capture area and can suffer from occlusion as well as being complicated to set up. Magnetic and electrical interference makes these systems highly susceptible to error, they also require extensive data cleaning and technical expertise to operate plus they suffer from limited area of use and lag for realtime use.
Magnetic systems calculate position and orientation by measuring the relative magnetic flux of three orthogonal coils on both the transmitter and each receiver. Magnetic systems require only two-thirds the number of markers compared to optical systems. One drawback is that the markers are susceptible to magnetic and electrical interference from metal objects in the environment and electrical sources. Magnetic and electrical interference makes these systems highly susceptible to error, they also require extensive data cleaning and technical expertise to operate plus they suffer from limited area of use and lag for realtime use.
Last theory on Wireless Sensor Networks coming up. What about the software, middleware and programming languages?
Software
Energy is the scarcest resource of WSN nodes, and it determines the lifetime of WSNs. WSNs are meant to be deployed in large numbers in various environments, including remote and hostile regions, with ad-hoc communications as key. For this reason, algorithms and protocols need to address the following issues:
Lifetime maximization
Robustness and fault tolerance
Self-configuration
Middleware
There is considerable research effort currently invested in the design of middleware for WSN’s. In general approaches can be classified into distributed database, mobile agents, and event-based.
Programming languages
Programming the sensor nodes is difficult when compared with normal computer systems. The resource constrained nature of these nodes gives rise to new programming models although most nodes are currently programmed in C.
Experts say nearly 2 million hospital-acquired infections occur each year, resulting in about 5,000 deaths and more than 90,000 illnesses in the US. Research shows that simple hand washing by medical staff could cut the number of infections in half. But what if your rushing to the next patient? There is now a wireless, credit-card-sized sensor that can detect whether health care workers have properly washed their hands upon entering a patient’s room.
The Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center was chosen as a study site because of its higher-than-average rate of hand hygiene compliance, nearly twice the national average. The sensor is worn like a name badge and is programmed to detect the presence of ethyl alcohol, the most common ingredient in hand cleansing solutions used in hospitals.
When a health care worker enters a patient’s room, a small, wall-mounted sensor sends a signal to the badge to check for the presence of alcohol. The worker places their hands near the badge to obtain a reading. Lights on the badge glow red if no alcohol is present, indicating the need to wash hands. A green light indicates alcohol is present.
“Health care workers don’t deliberately avoid washing their hands; they get distracted or are so busy moving from one thing to the next they don’t remember to do it,” said Mike Edmond, M.D., chief hospital epidemiologist. “Until now, the only way we’ve been able to track hand washing habits is through direct observation. This new system continuously monitors and records data and serves as a constant reminder.”
The hand hygiene program is part of an aggressive environmental and patient safety campaign at the VCU Medical Center called Safety First, Every Day. The goal of the campaign is to make the medical center the safest health care institution in the country with no events of preventable harm to patients, employees and visitors. The device was developed by BioVigil, LLC.
Doctors test the strenght of intrinsic hand muscles by letting the patient pull an push at their hand and fingers. Is this an accurate methode? No, a team of bioengineering students from Rice University developed a device to measure thenar, hypothenar, interosseus and lumbrical muscles.
Graduates Caterina Kaffes, Matthew Miller, Neel Shah and Shuai “Steve” Xu invented PRIME, or Peg Restrained Intrinsic Muscle Evaluator, for their senior project. “Twenty percent of all ER admissions are hand-related. Neuromuscular disorders like spinal cord injuries, Lou Gehrig’s, diabetes, multiple sclerosis-all these diseases affect the intrinsic hand muscles,” said Xu. PRIME, was created to replace the common test. The real goal is to quantify finger/muscle strength for a more accurate diagnosis for carpal tunnel syndrome evaluation and other disorders.
“U.S. surgeons perform over 500,000 procedures for carpal tunnel each year. $2 billion per year is spent treating this disease but up to 20 percent of all surgeries need to be redone. Our invention can be used across the spectrum of care from diagnosis to outcome measurements,” said Xu.
The device has three elements: a pegboard restraint, a force transducer enclosure and a PDA custom-programmed to capture measurements. In a five-minute test, a doctor uses pegs to isolate a patient’s individual fingers. “You wouldn’t think it works as well as it does, but once you are pegged in, you can’t move anything but the finger we want you to,” Miller said. A loop is fitted around the finger, and when the patient moves it, the amount of force generated is measured. “PRIME gets the peak force,” Xu said. “Then the doctor can create a patient-specific file with all your information, time-stamped, and record every single measurement.”
Mobile Health is concerned with your wellbeing. There are many programs monitoring the state of your physical body. But what about prehealth-care? Cyclists and pedestrians will become mobile pollution detectors in an initiative launched by Imperial College London.
Teams of cyclists and pedestrians are wearing sensors to measure air and noise pollution in four British cities. These mobile data collectors will help government-backed researchers pinpoint “pollution hot spots” and develop new policies for managing air quality.
The pocket-sized sensors can detect up to five different types of vehicle emissions at a time, then transmit data to Imperial College London via mobile phone. Imperial College researchers will track measurements and sensor movement on Google maps. Additional sensors mounted on traffic signals and street lamps will help the researchers make 3-D models of pollution clouds to determine if traffic signal patterns have an effect on air quality.
The three-year project, called Mobile Environmental Sensing System Across Grid Environments, or MESSAGE, involves 100 mobile and stationary sensors in Gateshead, Cambridge and Leicester, England, as well as the South Kensington district of London.
Write on the screen and draw figures and diagrams when taking notes. Use different color pens, circle things and draw arrows to indicate relationships and to mock up flow diagrams.
The interface is more personable and less intrusive. Comfortably hold the tablet and look at the person in the face.
Use it when standing, so it provides tremendous flexibility taking notes at the bedside.
Get a full keyboard when needed or swivel the screen.
While in a meeting, you can easily get away with a tablet.
You can be more efficient and faster navigating an electronic health record (EHR) that’s optimized for pen-based computing.
Using handwriting recognition forces to improve and maintain a certain quality of handwriting clarity.
Showin g patients diagrams, pictures, etc. to others.
It’s so natural to use the pen to scroll and “flip” through pages like a book while reading.
It invaluable on a plane and the person in front of you reclines and diminishes your workspace.
Toyota announced that they have developed a thought-controlled wheelchair. Honda has also developed a system that allows a person to control a robot through thoughts. Is the automotive industry coming to the health sector? Everything that’s rolling looks interesting now. See one of my last post.
Both companies continue to invest in innovation, science and engineering. The story of a bad economy and bad sales for a year or two is what you read in most newspapers. The story of why Toyota and Honda will be dominant companies 20 years from now is their superior management and focus on long term success instead of short term quarterly results.
The BSI-Toyota Collaboration Center, along with Japanese government research institute, RIKEN, and Genesis Research Institute, has succeeded in developing a system which utilizes one of the fastest technologies in the world, controlling a wheelchair using brain waves in as little as 125 milliseconds (one millisecond, or ms, is equal to 1/1000 seconds.
Plans are underway to utilize this technology in a wide range of applications centered on medicine and nursing care management. R&D under consideration includes increasing the number of commands given and developing more efficient dry electrodes. So far the research has centered on brain waves related to imaginary hand and foot control. However, through further measurement and analysis it is anticipated that this system may be applied to other types of brain waves generated by various mental states and emotions.
People who exercise regularly stay fit, have a lower chance of suffering from chronic ailments and have better mental health overall. How do you maintain your condition when you are becoming of age? Older people value their independence, so for them to continue to be active in society it is essential that they remain fit and mobile. As a consequence, modern geriatric care cannot be complete without a strong focus on physical exercise.
Two days ago, on the Dutch conference Games and Healthcare, I discovered SilverFit. “In our experience, people will exercise more intensely and more effectively when the exercise is fun instead of dull and repetitive” said Joris Wiersinga, director of SilverFit. “We create the fun element by making virtual reality computer games that stimulate exercise”.
Research at MIT in Boston describes three positive effects on patiënts who work with simulations:
The computer simulations stimulate and motivate the patient.
The patient practises more often.
Direct feedback from the simulations speeds up the learning process.
The SilverFit system is very easy for the player to use, always under supervision of a physiotherapist. All of the player’s movements are registered using a 3D camera. The player does not need to hold anything, press anything or use any menus. The camera registers the player’s movements and the game responds to them.
Many games can be played sitting down to exercise the legs, train balance, stretch the arms or practise standing up. At a higher level, the games can be played while standing with support from a walking stick, walker or supported by the physiotherapist. At the highest difficulty level, the games can be used for physical fitness exercises. Based on collected data, the games can be customised for use in the entire course of a rehabilitation plan.
In contrary to the Wii, the exercises and functionality are targeted to rehabilitation and physical therapy for the elderly. The system has seven games. These games can be played at several difficulty levels, leading to dozens of different game play experiences. Variations in individual therapy, group therapy or group activity are optional. SilverFit is an state of the art virtual training system and it’s price falls in the same price range as professional treadmills and other ‘traditional’ physical therapy equipment.
For some years now researchers at the University of Zaragoza in Spain are working on a wheelchair that would be operated by thought alone. Can we control devices just by thinking? The work in Spain has yielded a prototype model that essentially performs the basic task of getting a person from one place to another.
By first providing options on a laptop screen for where to go, the system then reads EEG waves as the user focuses on the preferred choice and moves the chair accordingly. The chair displays a realtime 3D HUD while the user concentrates on basic functions, such as rotating the chair left or right. That information is read by the chair via EEG waves (the electricity running along your scalp as a byproduct of your brain working). The chair also features laser sensors, allowing it to override a circumstance in which a misreading could drive the user into a wall or an innocent bystander.
The company Ambient introduces a same breakthrough wheelchair called the Audeo. Thought generated control is also in development in recent game controllers. And Adam Wilson, a graduate student at University of Wisconsin-Madison, linked up a “mind-reading” system developed at the Biomedical Engineering department to work with Twitter. By using EEG to record brain wave variations in patients focusing on a flashing letter. People who are locked-in and are not able to voluntarily use their muscles are now able to Tweet just like anyone else.
Co-founded by Allan Snyder, a neuroscientist and former University of Cambridge research fellow, Emotiv says its EPOC headset features 16 sensors that push against the player’s scalp to measure electrical activity in the brain – a process known as electro-encephalography. In theory, this allows the player to spin, push, pull, and lift objects on a computer monitor, simply by thinking. “There will be a convergence of gesture-based technology and the brain as a new interface – the Holy Grail is the mind” says Snyder.
Movement is captured through the placement of sensors (or markers) on or near each joint of the body. As each joint moves the positions or angles between the markers are recorded. Software records the, angles, velocities, accelerations and impulses, providing an accurate digital representation of the movement.
Software
The 
Graduates Caterina Kaffes, Matthew Miller, Neel Shah and Shuai “Steve” Xu invented PRIME, or Peg Restrained Intrinsic Muscle Evaluator, for their senior project. “Twenty percent of all ER admissions are hand-related. Neuromuscular disorders like spinal cord injuries, Lou Gehrig’s, diabetes, multiple sclerosis-all these diseases affect the intrinsic hand muscles,” said Xu. PRIME, was created to replace the common test. The real goal is to quantify finger/muscle strength for a more accurate diagnosis for carpal tunnel syndrome evaluation and other disorders.
Teams of cyclists and pedestrians are wearing sensors to measure air and noise pollution in four British cities. These mobile data collectors will help government-backed researchers pinpoint “pollution hot spots” and develop new policies for managing air quality.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://i0.wp.com/img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png)
By first providing options on a laptop screen for where to go, the system then reads EEG waves as the user focuses on the preferred choice and moves the chair accordingly. The chair displays a realtime 3D HUD while the user concentrates on basic functions, such as rotating the chair left or right. That information is read by the chair via EEG waves (the electricity running along your scalp as a byproduct of your brain working). The chair also features laser sensors, allowing it to override a circumstance in which a misreading could drive the user into a wall or an innocent bystander.
Mobile WellBeing 