We are researching and developing novel brain-computer interfaces to enable people in locked-in state to communicate and control robotic devices. Particular attention is on social interaction, emotion detection and environmental exploration. These are main tasks within the project TEEP-SLA, which aims to create empathic and expressive technologies for people with ALS.

TEEP-SLA is financed by IIT and Fondazione Roma, and counts with the support of Fondazione Sanità e Ricerca as a clinical partner. Research activities include the study of cognitive processes and of the dynamics of internal states of patients, with the goal of detecting emotions and volitional acts. These, in turn, are fed into novel robotic systems that allow the patient to perform the desired actions, being that of writing, playing a song or controlling a telepresence robot to virtually get out of the bed.