Patients suffering from disease or injury that leave them unable to move have little hope of independent mobility. However there is good news for them. Researchers are developing a thought-controlled robotic wheelchair. Spanish scientists have begun work on a new brain-computer interface, or BCI, capable of converting thought into commands that a wheelchair can execute. Javier Minguez, a researcher at the University of Zaragoza "We are planning to use non-invasive devices to record the rhythms from the surface of the skull, we also plan to use this system with a school for disabled children.” Dawn Taylor, an assistant professor says "You're not going to be using EEGs to control a robotic arm to play the piano or anything but you can certainly turn right and left and stop and go using that sort of signal. Two 800-MHz Intel computers mounted on the wheelchair will process these readings and send instructions to the wheels. A front-mounted laser will work as a sensor, detecting obstacles ahead and changes in the environment, like furniture that has been moved. This is particularly important for people with limited head and neck mobility, as they often cannot clearly see the way ahead, especially at ground level.

The team feels that the important issue is to have a good selection of the mental tasks for each user, so that they produce discriminable EEG patterns. One of the advantages of robotic wheelchairs is that their navigation technologies can override mechanical and human errors.
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