Following more than a decade research work on a mind-controlled exoskeleton that will enable a person with paralysis to walk, this demonstration will first be publicly witnessed at this year World Cup opener on June 12 and sure it will be a curtain raiser.
As part of the Walk Again Project which was Dr Miguel Nicolelis, a Brazilian neuroscientist based at Duke University in North Carolina has spearheaded for more than a decade.
Dr Nicolelis has been training eight patients since November at a lab in Sao Paulo, in the midst of huge media speculation that one of them will stand up from his or her wheelchair and deliver the first kick of this year’s World Cup. Speaking in Portuguese from Sao Paulo, he told BBC “that was the original plan, But not even I could tell you the specifics of how the demonstration will take place. This is being discussed at the moment.”
The Duke University researcher explained the patients are over 20 years and the oldest being about 35 years. He further noted that “We started the training in a virtual environment with a simulator. In the last few days, four patients have donned the exoskeleton to take their first steps and one of them has used mental control to kick a ball. So we have realised our objectives: The exoskeleton is being controlled by brain activity and it is relaying feedback signals to the patient.”
The technology is the state-of-the-art in artificial skin sensing as explained by Dr Gordon Cheng of the Technical University of Munich who has been working with Dr Nicolelis and researchers in France to build the exoskeleton.
The sensors on the artificial skin of the robot can sense the environment in a similar way to humans. Dr Cheng explained that they are working on doing Pre-contact sensing as they have already established contact sensing which is that, when the exoskeleton touch the ground their is pressure, so the sensor senses the pressure. The sensor also carry temperature and vibration information.
Responding to critics that doubted if the technology will be available in the near future, he added that; “Our proposal was always to demonstrate the technology in the World Cup as the first, symbolic step of a new approach in the care of patients with paralysis.
“This is the way science advances. You have to demonstrate and test the concept. It is a way of telling civil society, that pays for science around the world, that we have the possibility to dream with this reality because it is already working experimentally.”
He also so said that the key message the demonstration will convey to millions around the world is that “science and technology can be agents of social transformation in the whole world, that they can be used to alleviate the suffering and the limitations of millions of people. He also stressed that “After the demonstration we will continue and then we are going to work out how to get the technology into people’s hands. It is going to be within our time. I still have another 20 years before I retire, it’s going to be before that.”