BEIJING: A brain-computer interface research team from Zhejiang University in China has achieved a first by successfully enabling a robotic arm controlled by the mind to write Chinese characters through an invasive brain-computer interface, People Daily reported.

The team unveiled their most recent research accomplishment at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine (SAHZU) in Hangzhou, the capital city of Zhejiang Province in eastern China.

During the event, the research team operated a robotic arm that smoothly wrote Chinese characters meaning “Zhejiang University” and “Brain-Computer Interface” based on brain signal data previously extracted from a male patient surnamed Zhang.

“Some stroke survivors and patients suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) lose their writing and speaking abilities. But by extracting their brain signals to control external mechanical devices, they can write out what they want to say and communicate with the outside world. This is a ma
jor breakthrough,” said Zhang Jianmin, Director of the Neurosurgery Department of SAHZU.

The research team has been conducting pioneering interdisciplinary research into brain-computer interfaces since 2006.

The team’s latest focus is brain-controlled Chinese character writing. With this technology, patients only need to think about the normal writing process and the robotic arm can obtain information about the writing trajectory in their minds by decoding neural signals and then writing for them.

Despite facing various challenges, the team has developed a unique encoding mechanism for Chinese character writing and a new technology for decoding the trajectory of Chinese character writing.

The team’s device can achieve a 91.3-percent accuracy in classifying 100 common Chinese characters offline. With the assistance of a language model, it can achieve an online classification accuracy of 96.2 percent.

Source: Emirates News Agency