BCI Startups Compete To Augment Human Disabilities With Unmanned Systems

The ultimate purpose of robotics is to improve the human condition. As organic species, our bodies are vulnerable to damage and disrepair. In the Stanford?Encyclopedia of Philosophy ?on the “Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics,” the entry on “care robots” highlights its societal benefits over countering dystopian fears: “One reason why the issue of care has come to the fore is that people have argued that we will need robots in aging societies. This argument makes problematic assumptions…Most importantly, it ignores the nature of automation, which is not simply about replacing humans, but about allowing humans to work more efficiently. It is not very clear that there really is an issue here since the discussion mostly focuses on the fear of robots de-humanising care, but the actual and foreseeable robots in care are assistive robots for classic automation of technical tasks.” Understanding the nature of a “care robots” is critical to furthering its development by empowering more people with disabilities with assistive mechatronics. This is the mission of ETH’s?Cybathlon ?competitions, which recently announced its third global olympic-style games for October 2024.

While the pandemic raged across the world in 2020, the organizers of 2nd Cybathlon persisted with their competition to use robots for medical rehabilitation. “We originally scheduled the event for May, and in March we realized we couldn’t do the event. We had three years in preparation, so we had to cancel the event in Zurich in the arena. So we decided we can’t stop the movement, we needed to give the teams the platform to show the world what they have achieved… So we decided to make a global edition which was decentralized with teams setting up race tracks in their home locations,” explains Dr. Roland Sigrist, the show’s organizer. Once Dr. Sigrist had everything in place, Cybathlon 2020 became a 3-4 hour livestream event. As he plans Cybathlon 2024, he shared that this tournament will be a hybrid event with both remote teams and live participants jostling for bot glory in Zurich. Some past Cybathlon standouts include?Scewo , a Swiss-based commercial stair climbing wheelchair company, and Imperial College’s?Neuromechanics Rehab and Technology ?lab's robotic prosthesis. The contest has been gaining in popularity with 66 teams registered in 2016, 100 teams in 2020, and quite possibly 250 in 2024. “We think the new approach is even more inclusive,” boasts Dr. Sigrist. He then unveiled to me that in 2024?Cybathlon will be adding two new disciplines to address the needs of the visually impaired and severe upper and lower limb disabilities.

One of the most promising control methodologies for roboticists aiming to develop medical therapies for quadriplegics and paraplegics is Brain Control Interface (BCI). This technology creates a communication pathway from the brain’s electrical activity to an external device, such as robotic arm or computer.?Dr. Jacques Vidal ?at UCLA first published his seminal work on BCI in 1973, which subsequently led to many new discoveries around repairing cognitive and sensory-motor function. Vini Tripathii is the founder of Invictus BCI , a startup focused on developing a more functional prosthetic hand. She hopes to compete at the 2024 Cybathlon with her BCI-enabled prosthesis. The recently graduated Cornell masters student explains her motivation: “Three years ago, a family member got very sick. It got so bad that doctors had to amputate her hand so that she could live. After the amputation, I thought that once she got a prosthetic, it would fix everything — but it didn’t. In fact, even after getting a premium state-of-the-art prosthetic — she found herself struggling with even simple mundane tasks. After speaking with other amputees and clinicians I realized these were problems shared by millions of people, and that they were inherent in the prosthetic control system. I started researching alternative methods that could provide more intuitive and functional control.” The BCI entrepreneur recently joined NYU Stern’s?Endless Frontier Labs ?to begin the steps to commercialize her invention.

ff Venture Capital ?(where I’m a Venture Partner) was one of the early investors in the BCI space with its seed investment in Muse in 2012. Since then, the current BCI market is estimated to be close to $2 billion and is estimated to double by 2026. The interest in mastering the cranium has lured the Department of Defense, IBM, and even Elon Musk in pushing the envelope of possibilities. Musk’s startup?Neuralink ?is building brain implants to directly connect cerebral cortexes to computers. Earlier this month at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Summit, Musk bragged about his ground-breaking investment, “Neuralink’s working well in monkeys, and we’re actually doing just a lot of testing and just confirming that it’s very safe and reliable, and the Neuralink device can be removed safely. We hope to have this in our first humans — which will be people that have severe spinal-cord injuries like tetraplegics, quadriplegics — next year, pending FDA approval.” According?CB Insights ?other companies to watch in the space, include:?Kernel ,?Dreem ,?Thync ,?Halo Neuroscience ,?Synchron ,?BrainCo ,?Neurable ,?Flow Neuroscience ,?Cognixion ,?Bitbrain Technologies ,?Paradromics ,?MELTIN MMI ,?Neuros Medical ,?NextMind ,?Emotiv ,?Q30 Innovations ,?BIOS ,?NeuroScouting ,?NeuroPace , and Leonardo DiCaprio’s?MindMaze .

While the market for BCI is all encompassing with recreational consumer products and psychological therapies, the greatest promise offers the ability of connecting robotic parts to compensate for human frailties. Ms.?Tripathii says it best, “The problem lies not in the mechanics of the prosthetic hand, but the prosthetic control interface. Current prosthetic control systems are frustrating for amputees to use as they are unintuitive, capable of only a few grasps and have unreliable performance.” This personal journey led the Cornell scientist to BCI as the solution. “In essence, a BCI decodes neural activity and translates it into an external command: this can be used in a variety of applications, including assistive technology. The BCI decodes the received signals into a hand movement, then passes instructions for the prosthetic hand to perform that hand movement,” explains Invictus’ founder.?Tripathii’s company is on the cusp of developing its first prototype complete with a mechanical phalanges for a growing list of potential users.

By 2024,?Tripathii hopes to showcase its proprietary robotic hand at Cybathlon and take home 1st Place. As she elaborated, “Cybathlon is a unique opportunity to really test BCI performance in a myriad of day to day activities. It’s an event like no other, where you can really see the capabilities of BCI.” In describing the opportunity further, the innovator exclaimed, “Most importantly, it is a forum where indomitable human spirit partners with human ingenuity to say that we can and we shall not be limited by any constraints. We are very excited to be joining in 2024!” This sentiments aligns very well with the vision of?Dr. Sigrist who calls the conference “a movement.”?Tripathii professes that Cybathlon is really a catalyst for promoting technology like hers to ultimately change the paradigm of care. “Many of the physical challenges that we currently face, whether from disabilities or old age, will become less of a challenge and more of an augmented task. BCI will transform the way we do things to make the world safer, more productive, and more accessible. It will make it possible to do work more dexterously, accelerate learning, and redefine how we create and interact with art, music and other media types.”

Editor’s Note:?Learn more or register a team for Cybathlon 2024