mHealth keeps them rolling.
Posted by Ron Otten on 02/07/2009
Toyota announced that they have developed a thought-controlled wheelchair. Honda has also developed a system that allows a person to control a robot through thoughts. Is the automotive industry coming to the health sector? Everything that’s rolling looks interesting now. See one of my last post.
Both companies continue to invest in innovation, science and engineering. The story of a bad economy and bad sales for a year or two is what you read in most newspapers. The story of why Toyota and Honda will be dominant companies 20 years from now is their superior management and focus on long term success instead of short term quarterly results.
The BSI-Toyota Collaboration Center, along with Japanese government research institute, RIKEN, and Genesis Research Institute, has succeeded in developing a system which utilizes one of the fastest technologies in the world, controlling a wheelchair using brain waves in as little as 125 milliseconds (one millisecond, or ms, is equal to 1/1000 seconds.
Plans are underway to utilize this technology in a wide range of applications centered on medicine and nursing care management. R&D under consideration includes increasing the number of commands given and developing more efficient dry electrodes. So far the research has centered on brain waves related to imaginary hand and foot control. However, through further measurement and analysis it is anticipated that this system may be applied to other types of brain waves generated by various mental states and emotions.
