Translator: Masako Kigami Reviewer: Claire Ghyselen
Close your eyes slowly.
Imagine you are floating in the sky.
You don't move your feet, or your hands.
Just as you envision,
you can fly freely in the sky.
Now, open your eyes slowly.
I would like to create such a world.
I would like to try something nobody has done before
and explore new technologies utilizing brain waves.
We think, we have feelings and we imagine things.
For many, many years, many researchers have tried to understand
where in our body exactly thoughts and feelings come from.
In contrast, I have been doing research in the field of information engineering,
which includes artificial intelligence, autonomous robots,
image recognition for robots' eyes,
and communication between humans and robots.
During my research, I couldn't help asking myself
how I could create robots that would move
according to our thoughts and directed cognition.
It is very simple.
The purpose is simple, but the implementation is very difficult.
Please watch this first video.
This is a robot made in my lab about five years ago, in 2011.
I recycled a wheelchair.
It calculates the distance from walls
and perceives its location using several sensors.
Once you encode its destination,
the robot can go there without any GPS enabled.
Naturally, it has functions to avoid crashing into walls or doors.
I have built other types of robots too:
one that has a voice recognition function
and another that follows people at all times.
Even when I was conceiving of these robots,
I kept wondering where on earth our feelings and thoughts come from.
Incidentally,
one day, I had a chance to measure the brain waves of my son.
So I looked at them over and over again,
and I asked his doctor to explain them to me.
I had so many questions, and gradually, I eventually understood.
Finally and gradually,
I have understood what they mean and how we analyse them.
Originally, brain waves were used in the medical field only.
But recently, equipment to read brain waves
has also been developed in other fields.
The brain is a very soft organ.
It floats under the scalp, inside the skull.
It is soft but has a stable shape.
A subtle electric potential runs in your brain
simultaneously with the activities your are performing.
It appears as an electric potential on the scalp.
When you aggregate these electric potentials, you get brain waves.
I have gradually come to think
that brain waves can help us understand what the person is doing or thinking.
These images are my brain waves.
They are the images
from when I look at a number - here, number two,
on the lower right of the screen.
They tell us what my brain waves are at specific moments.
The screen goes blank for five seconds,
then numbers appear randomly for 15 seconds.
Why should they be random?
We tend to predict the next number that will appear.
Random numbers prevent this.
So a random number,
in this case, three;
up there, three.
Now it disappears.
Let's wait for next number.
At the very moment that the number one appears,
there is a wave at the top that moves up and down.
This is a specific frequency, called P300.
It appears when we are acutely aware of something
or find out something.
At the same time, if you look closely,
the bottom waveform changes somehow.
This is usually called a view angle.
It's the brain wave that appears when we watch something.
I think I can find out
what you are feeling or looking at by watching this brain wave.
When I say this, I'm mistakenly considered to be a neurologist, but I'm not.
I'm a just college teacher of information engineering.
However, just by looking at these brain waves in action,
I was able to figure out that there is some relation
between what we see and our brain waves.
Actually, brain waves transmit various bits of information,
such as for our five senses, like smell or sight.
Brain waves have myoelectricity, information about muscles.
To filter this information,
I use the power of information engineering, my specialty,
and of machine learning, including with deep learning.
What is machine learning?
As an example, I have a smartphone.
You may have an iPhone or an Android.
iPhone has a voice recognition system, coined Siri.
Facebook provides facial recognition.
They are a kind of machine learning.
Massive data in the world are called big data.
When collecting big data and uploading it into a computer,
the computer automatically creates rules by learning.
It screens every new piece of data
to find out the best existing rule that applies to it.
Welcome to the world of deep learning.
Most of my research is focused on deep learning,
and I will continue to research this in the future.
I think deep learning will contribute to the understanding of brain waves
and that it will have an impact on our daily lives.
The first object that I created is this one on the screen.
I built a robotic hand by intertwining brain waves and deep learning.
This young researcher in my lab
opens and closes the hand with his brain waves only.
He operates the robot with his brain waves only.
The hand opens now.
When he thinks strongly that he wants to close it,
it takes a few seconds,
but it slowly closes.
This is my first prototype.
This got the attention of media for a while.
Naturally, several companies invited me to business meetings.
So I suggested to them that we work together.
But when I explained it to them thoroughly,
most companies changed their minds and declined
because they wanted to use this technology in business quickly.
Honestly, I couldn't attain such a level that fast.
So my team decided to adapt the technology to a wheelchair,
another focus of my research.
This guy wears a machine cap to scan brain waves.
He instructs the wheelchair: 'Go forward. Go right. Go left. Stop'
with his brain waves.
See. The wheelchair is moving.
Its biggest drawback is you need to keep thinking about wheelchair movements.
(Laughter)
Soon after commanding 'Go right',
if you think about left, the chair is moving to the wrong direction.
The risky issue is when you want to avoid colliding with a wall,
it will take two seconds to read your brain waves.
So you crash into the wall.
It should be limited to the lab.
To be honest, I doubt its practical use.
So it made us think hard
about how we could create a smarter, autonomous control system
that could make the wheelchair move more fluidly.
We created a new wheelchair just one year ago.
It sets the destination within two seconds
after we emit the brain waves by thinking about it.
And then the wheelchair moves automatically and autonomously
to the destination.
It's equipped with sensors
so that the wheelchair can locate its position in relation to the walls.
So after the driver has thought about his destination,
he doesn't need to keep thinking about it.
When the wheelchair senses danger or someone blocking its way,
it has the ability to make an emergency stop.
So these are some of the things I have developed so far.
The media has talked quite a lot about my wheelchair.
I think our research has other potential applications.
Although the autonomous driving system
based on brain waves to set the destination
was a kind of breakthrough,
when I actually took a ride, it was a little bit awkward.
(Laughter)
Because it's great that you can go to the destination just by thinking,
but for example -
and this is the most important part of my story -
when you see people walking in the street,
or you want to take a look at something along the way,
or you want to stop and talk with people coming your way,
you can't, because autonomous driving does not allow you to stop on the way.
I would think that's probably the case for other autonomous vehicles
such as the Google car or other vehicles.
For sure, the car will go where you want to go.
It does not move like you want, but it goes where you want.
(Laughter)
However, autonomous vehicles don't allow you to drop by
or chat with someone you meet on your way.
Brain waves communicate many other things than the place you want to go.
But also, as I've hinted earlier, brain waves also communicate information
from your five senses, your line of sight or myoelectricity.
I used to ignore this information, but now I use it too.
Our system is not yet complete,
but this is the first time that we are disclosing this prototype to the public.
In a way, you are at a world-class premiere.
(Laughter)
In this way, I develop many products using brain waves.
Thanks to the wide media coverage, I have been able to meet many people,
like medical providers,
ALS patients,
or patients with a healthy brain but fully paralysed.
When I met different patients and their families and caretakers,
they told me about their desperate needs,
as they probably have been going through severe difficulties,
and I explained my research to them.
Thankfully, I have been able to meet many people
and let them know about my research on wheelchairs.
I want to develop robots to support mobility
that everyone will want to use
because wheelchairs are not practical in daily life.
We can't use wheelchairs in every situation of our lives.
So I want to make them convenient for everyday life.
In that respect, I want to contribute to a society
where diverse people with diverse abilities
have equal access to tools and devices that fulfills their diverse needs.
My contribution is limited,
but I want to act on it.
I want people to be able to move anywhere they want to go
just by the power of their thoughts, even with challenged motor skills.
That's my motivation to go on with my research.
Thank you.
(Applause)