As ApplySci predicted in January, Julian Pinto, a paraplegic, successfully kicked off the World Cup in Brazil this week.
Pinto was aided by a mind-controlled exoskeleton created by Duke Professor Miguel Nicolelis and a team of 150 researchers involved in the Walk Again Project.
They named the device the BRA-Santos Dumont, a combination of the three-letter sporting code for Brazil and Alberto Santos-Dumont, a Brazilian aviator who demonstrated controllable flight was possible by flying his dirigible around the Eiffel Tower.
The robotics work was led by Professor Gordon Cheng at the Technische Universitat Munchen, and French researchers built the exoskeleton. Nicolelis’s team focused on ways to read people’s brain waves, and use those signals to control robotic limbs.
To operate the device, the wearer moves his legs by thinking about it. Sensors inside a cap on the wearer’s head transfer the neuronal information and send it to a computer inside the exoskeleton’s backpack. This information is then sent to the legs of the exoskeleton, which move via hydraulic drivers.