Need help with the exoskeleton receiving commands from BCI

Question

Dear friends,

a friend of mine is paralyzed from neck down after she had encephalitis a few years ago. Since then, she's been confined to a wheelchair, depending on everyone to perform basic, daily tasks. Sad thing is that she herself is a doctor and was helping and medicating sick people during recent COVID pandemic and most likely this is what triggered the events that led to her encephalitis.

I found your exoskeleton days ago and it immediately raised my attention as I think it can be helpful for my friend to regain some of her lost freedom. However, since she is paralyzed, I had the idea of using a brain-computer interface (BCI) that sends instructions to the exoskeleton, hence allowing her to move her upper limbs - shoulders, arms, hands and fingers.

To some extent I'm aware of costs, implementation, etc. that is involved, and a PhD with whom I've been talking has recommended me to use a BCI named EMOTIV which I've adopted as the default device as it is lightweight, easy to use, and its cost is low.

However it also led me to many questions. First of them - is there already a way to communicate your exoskeleton with a BCI? If so, will it use bluetooth, require cables and USB ports, a computer, or a specialized mobile app?

Regards,

Franklin

(Edit: personal information removed for privacy)

 · Answer

Hello Franklin,

I'm sorry to hear about your friend. You are right that it is our goal that the openexo package may help people in all sorts of situations. As a disclaimer, we have not yet developed or tested on people with full paralysis and our design is not FDA approved and is intended for research applications but we are happy to see you are taking on that challenge!

We do not currently have any supported forms of communication with computers outside of the PCB. However the PCBs have easily accessible pins intended for analog input connected to pins A14, A15, A2, A3 and others on the teensy development board which can be configured to input/output for communication. You could use this pinout to perform wired communicate with another computer/controller. Please refer to the openexo wiki for the PCB map and development board pinouts: https://wiki.theopenexo.org/app/page/17sioUaeDuLdqzxKOpQAmIGOUpqZ_5MvOWJioIy-ePfA?p=14AIGjap02Wv8jPJxyezvfYJYFVIJIoO1

Best of luck with development and please continue to reach out with more questions,

Connor

franklin.jr · Answer

Thanks for your answer, Connor.

It was so sad for me to learn about her situation. She had a very active, playful, hard-working life before this happened to her and I want so much to do something that goes beyond sending money or "good vibrations".

I have lots of questions but won't ask all of them in a single message; most of them will come as it progresses.

- Is there any similar project or concept elsewhere? I searched a lot but so far I could not find any other project that allows paralyzed people to wear a prosthetic device for upper limbs, only prosthetic devices for amputees or rehabilitating from injuries.

- Is it possible for me to download and print only upper limbs of your exoskeleton? This is my focus right now.

- Will your exoskeleton receive commands from internet? I am considering a scenario where your exoskeleton will be in a lab and I'm developing from home so others elsewhere can cooperate. Final concept won't be connected to the web except for product support.

Regards,

Franklin

connorg · Answer

Hi Franklin,

Please ask away! We are excited to share our work and passions with people across the globe.

- For similar projects I would recommend investigating Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) and how it has been integrated into exoskeletons for people with paralysis. I would also recommend you look at exoskeleton report website (exoskeletonreport.com) to find relevant research in the field. Don't be afraid to look at prosthetics for people with limb loss as well as they closely border this field and may have exciting innovations you wish to investigate for an exoskeleton.

- The elbow exoskeleton hardware is not currently available but we are working diligently to get it available online for you. When it is available it will be found on our wiki here ( https://wiki.theopenexo.org/app/page/1-ktwqa2bVz2twbV05SO0lfxYpCgWnylv?p=14AIGjap02Wv8jPJxyezvfYJYFVIJIoO1). I will try to update this forum post when it is available.

- The openexo devices are not currently configured to access wifi, so they cannot be directly controlled via wifi. Nor is this a feature we are currently developing, sorry. However, you can share code over the internet via websites like github and then have in-person teams work with remote developers to test changes to the system. We suggest you create your own github repo and share with your team so that you can share your development code space online. Please clone from our github repo if you have not already ( https://github.com/naubiomech/OpenExo).