Team from Pitt’s Rehab Neural Engineering Labs Takes Home a Gold Medal in the 2024 CYBATHLON

A team from Pitt’s Rehab Neural Engineering Labs (RNEL) recently competed in Cybathlon, an international competition where teams of technology developers and a person with a disability compete to tackle everyday tasks using modern assistive technologies.  

The team, called PittCrew, won a gold medal competing remotely in the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) Race on Oct. 26. PittCrew consisted of 11 researchers and a “pilot,” Phillip McKenzie, who is paralyzed from the neck down. McKenzie received a perfect score in the competition.  

McKenzie competed using RNEL’s brain implant technology. He has four intracortical microelectrodes surgically implanted in his brain: two in the somatosensory cortex and two in the motor cortex areas of his brain.  

“The implants are very small--the size of your fingertip--and each can contain up to 100 electrodes,” said Ceci Verbaarschot, PittCrew’s team manager and a postdoctoral associate in RNEL.  

The microelectrodes in the somatosensory cortex of McKenzie’s brain are used to simulate a sense of touch but were not permitted to be used for the competition. For the BCI Race, McKenzie and the PittCrew team utilized the microelectrodes that were in the motor cortex, which record directly from the parts of the brain that would typically control his hand.  

When McKenzie attempts to move his hand, the implants in the motor cortex are activated, and brain signals then decode the direction and type of hand movement to control the BCI. 

For the BCI Race, he had to use this technology to complete a series of virtual reality tasks.  

“There were four unique tasks that were all focused on daily life activities, and they were repeated at different difficulty levels. One task was navigating a wheelchair from one side of a room to another while avoiding obstacles, such as furniture or plants. At the more difficult level, there were little Roomba robots that he had to avoid,” said Verbaarschot. 

Other tasks included navigating a key to a lock, utilizing a digital menu selection, and holding a cup steady underneath an ice machine.  

The ice machine task “was very tricky because, in our research, we’re very focused on always doing something. But for this, Phill had to do nothing. He had to have a very calm brain to hold the cup still and be exactly right underneath the ice machine. The key task also required him to be very precise--it was actually very realistic,” she said.

In preparation for the event, the PittCrew Team had to optimize their software and hardware to find a system that could work for all the BCI Race’s tasks. They also worked with McKenzie to practice the game in his home and in their lab. 

“You never know exactly how it will go on the day itself, but I think Phill was completely confident. He had zero doubt that he was going to win,” Verbaarschot said. McKenzie had the electrodes implanted about a year and a half ago and is one of three participants in RNEL's BCI research trial.   

“He is our newest participant, so this was a really cool opportunity for him to get to know what you can do with this technology and get a chance to shine.”   

PittCrew stood out among the teams in the BCI Race for being the only group to use brain implant technology.  

“Most teams used EEG to record brain signals, but we make use of a device that is directly recording from the person’s brain activity. That gives us a slight advantage because we’re close to the source of information,” said Verbaarschot.  

She is hopeful that Pitt will have another team competing in the next Cybathlon, slated for 2028.  

“What I like most about Cybathlon is that it gives an opportunity to focus on our research participants. They go to the lab two to three days a week for years on end, and nobody ever sees that,” she said. “But they work very hard, and we wouldn’t be able to do anything without them.” 

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“Reprinted with permission from the University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences. The News Article Shannon Turgeon was originally published on University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences on 19 November 2024.”