Projects

2021 to present

Merging novel wireless communication, neuroscience, bionics, Artificial Intelligence and sensing to create for the first time a battery-free high-speed wireless in-body communication platform for Brain-Machine-Body connectivity. Groundbreaking technological components - wireless two-way microwave fat intra-body and RF backscatter communication, battery-free powering technology, bio-inspired sensing, dexterous biomechatronic extremity- will be codesigned and a proof-of-concept, revolutionary untethered brain-machine interface will be created. This technology will have profound impact in the fields of neuroprosthetics (restoration of missing biological functions such as vision, audition, movement, sensation, movement, cognition through the bypassing damaged circuits), Brain-Computer Interfaces (brain plasticity through machine learning, gaming, virtual reality), and electroceuticals (modulation of organ function through neural circuits instead of pharmaceuticals), gaming (immersion), and Virtual Reality. B-CRATOS will overcome major challenges relating to power consumption, batteries, and data transmission bandwidth through breakthrough battery-free bidirectional wireless communication technology.

B-CRATOS: Wireless Brain-Connect inteRfAce TO machineS

https://www.b-cratos.eu/

Workpackages

2015 to 2021

How does the mind produce movement? How do billions of brain cells harmonize the activity of hundreds of muscles to produce the movements basic for our daily life such as grasping? This question has fascinated scientist and engineers for centuries, but beyond that it has become crucial for medicine: in cases such as paralysis and extreme cases such as locked-in syndrome, a better understanding of how the brain produces motion would allow engineers to develop devices that can recover some mobility and restore a patient’s social connection. We aim to understand how the brain produces the necessary signals to control the arm and hand. In specific we ask a crucial question: how can high dimensional signals, such as the ones required for arm movement, be recovered from the cortex to control an artificial device? For this we perform experiments in primates while they perform real and virtual grasps. Using a brain computer interface (virtual arm prosthesis) we aim to understand the neuronal population activity patterns that coordinate grasping actions.

FOR 1847: The Physiology of Distributed Computing Underlying Higher Brain Functions in Non-Human Primates

Section B3: Processing of grasp intentions in parietal, premotor, and motor cortex