Activity of the consortia

So far we have seen that the goal of TOBI project is to bring valuable contribution to the BCI area, by providing tools meant to help the users and companies and future innovations. During my research, I could not find any clear information of how this entire process was structured, how they came up with different subjects and if there was a voting system or not. However, I have found that four main directions were identified and during the period of the subjects the partners and associates gather for four workshops.

The four main applications areas where TOBI focused in order to help people were:

• Communication & Control - just imagine you can control a computer just by thinking of certain actions. This tools are meant to increase the capacity of changing information between user and interface with the help of EEG signals.
• Motor substitution - being able to regain some of mobility and manipulation functions would have been looked as a miracle not so many years ago. With the help of neuroprostheses this is starting to be more and more viable.
• Entertainment - even though it is not nearly as important as the last two, this area also has a great potential. In day to day life we interact with the environment through auxiliar interfaces such as switches, joysticks, computer screens. Being able to express our feelings and preferences just by thinking about it would be a huge step of progress (in fact it already is). The standards and tools that came out of this project could be some of the pieces that glue together future technologies in BCI.
• Motor recovery - as we have seen usually BCI technologies are looked as a replacement tool for the people with mobility disabilities. However, they can also help patients with the recovery. Mental practice of motor actions can regain sensors abilities.

From the start of the project and to its finished a significant numbers of papers, book chapters and books have been published by the partners involved in TOBI. Most of them relate or describe the work developed inside the project. You can find a list of this publications at this address.

As far as my research went all of the work is what we call open source. This means all of these tools can be just downloaded and integrated in projects by anyone who has any interest in them. This is also the case for the standards I have mentioned in my previous posts: TiA, TiC, TiD. They can be found and copied at this address. This further strengths the voluntary aspect of this work.