T16: Advances in Brain-Machine/Computer Interfaces

Half Day Tutorial

Günter Edlinger (short bio)
g.tec medical engineering GmbH/Guger Technologies OG, Austria

Christoph Guger (short bio)
g.tec medical engineering GmbH/Guger Technologies OG, Austria

Objectives:

The Brain-Machine/Computer Interface (BCI) research area is a vital and fast expanding field. BCIs have been developed during the last years for people with severe disabilities to improve their quality of life. Applications of BCI systems comprise the restoration of movements, communication and environmental control. However, recently BCI applications have been also used in different research areas e.g. in the field of virtual reality. The Tutorial will discuss necessary prerequisites to successfully perform BCI experiments in non-invasive and invasive ways. Live demonstrations of BCI control will allow to understand the progress of the technology.

Content:

insights into the hardware for BCI research
insights into the software for BCI research
enabling participants to run their own experiments
giving participants the chance to analyze their BCI performance
showing how to control a smart home environment
showing avatar control with the BCI
showing robot control with the BCI
discussing advantages/disadvantages of dry/wet sensors
discussing non-invasive and invasive BCI approaches

Target Audience:

The goal of the workshop is to bring together researcher and interested audience to describe and demonstrate the options available in the field of Brain/Neural Machine Interfaces. Especially usability and reliability of BCI control allows now developing and displaying more advanced applications. We think that such a workshop will be very well accepted from the audience working in the area of HCI combining different modalities for interactions.

Relevant links:

Brief Biographical sketches

Günter Edlinger studied control engineering at the University of Technology Graz and carried out research work at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (Prof. Pfurtscheller) at the University of Technology Graz. He worked there as an assistant professor and teacher and received his PhD degree in 1998. The topic of his PhD work was the design of a High Resolution EEG. He is co-founder of gtec. He is responsible for R&D with special emphasis on the development and production of medical systems since more than 15 years.

Christoph Guger studied biomedical engineering at the University of Technology Graz and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. Then he carried out research work at the Department of Medical Informatics (Prof. Pfurtscheller) at the University of Technology Graz and received his PhD degree in 1999. The topic of his PhD work was the design of an EEG-based brain-computer interface. This was the first real-time BCI system with continuous feedback. He also developed the real-time analysis with common spatial patterns which is still the fastest and most accurate approach for oscillatory BCIs and developed also a P300 BCI with very high accuracy and speed. In the last years he worked also with ALS and tetraplegic patients in different countries.

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