Beijing-based Tsinghua University has succeeded in developing a brain-computer interface system that can change brain wave of human thinking into computer steering instructions. With this system, people can not only have a robot dog play football, but also make a phone call by just thinking of it.

A special soccer game was going on in the laboratory of the Biomedical Engineering Department of Tsinghua University's School of Medicine on June 14. At the football field were two robot dogs, one acting as the forward and the other as the goalkeeper. Behind the goalkeeper was a football, and the forward needed to go over the obstacles in front of it, rush to the other side of the field, dodge the goalkeeper and score.

Different from robot dog soccer games in the past, this game was not controlled by computer programs, but by two Tsinghua University students wearing electrode caps in front of the brain wave displayer that recorded their thinking.

With the same principle of having robot dogs play soccer, Tsinghua University also demonstrated how to make a phone call by just thinking of it. A student acted as a person who lost the movement of his limbs in an accident and could only call his friends or relatives through thinking. In front of him was the face of a telephone with number keys, B (backspace) and C (call) keys. He kept his eyes on a number for three to five seconds and after 78 seconds, he made the call successfully.

This technology simultaneously records brain wave, interprets simple ideas of humans to some extent and translates the ideas into instructions so that people can control computers, household electric appliances, robots and other equipment directly though thinking.

This high-end composite technology that integrates artificial intelligence with bio intelligence can help handicapped people who have a normally functioning brain but have lost movement to control their wheelchairs or artificial limbs and even surf the Internet with computers. This technology has applied for national patent.

(Chinanews June 16, 2006)