When Benjamin Choi was in third grade, he saw a “60 Minutes” documentary about mind-controlled prosthetics which stuck with him for years. Seven years later, Choi was in tenth grade and stuck at home due to the Covid-19 pandemic. With his summer plans out the window, and the documentary still on his mind, Choi went to work building a mind-controlled robotic arm of his own, (via Smithsonian Magazine).
He used his sister’s at-home 3D printer, building the arm one piece at a time and stringing it together with bolts and rubber bands. The arm itself is pretty impressive, especially considering it was printed at home and constructed atop a basement ping pong table, but the real magic is in the algorithm Choi designed.
Using a set of noninvasive electrodes at the forehead and ear, Choi’s device gathers brain signals and translates them into movement of the arm. What’s more, the algorithm learns over time, meaning that a wearer should expect improved results the more they use the arm. At present, the arm exists as a detached piece of machinery on a table, but Choi intends to develop a socket so that it could be attached to a person. Despite the impressive amount of work he did by himself, he won’t have to do the rest alone. Choi won funding from MIT and has the ear of scientists there, as well as at Stony Brook University, Microsoft, and elsewhere.
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