Self-taught patient builds mind-controlled wheelchair in 48 hours

Wang Ning, 33, and his wife Huang Jinhua assembled a brain-controlled wheelchair prototype in 48 hours at RedNote's first developer contest, held April 7-10 in Shanghai's Zhangjiang innovation district. Their entry won first place in the hardware track and CNY50,000 (US$7,400) from a CNY500,000 prize pool, tech outlet ITHome reported.

Three months later the couple demonstrated an upgraded version at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai. Wang appeared on CCTV's "Focus Report" in a segment filmed there.

Wang was two days from his wedding banquet in 2020 when a scan found a tumor in his cervical spine. He told the Global Times it ran 13 centimeters long and 1.1 centimeters across and had almost filled his spinal canal.

Surgeons removed it. The operation cost him feeling in three fingers of his right hand and left him briefly paralyzed. Walking took another three months to return.

A second tumor surfaced roughly six months later in his thoracolumbar spine, about 12.8 centimeters long and already bending his lower back, he told the paper. The operation to remove it left him unable to feel pain anywhere, a standard indicator of spinal cord damage.

At his worst, Beijing Youth Daily reported, only his eyes still moved. Doctors he consulted around the country told him the damage could not be repaired.

He began working through research papers and overseas case studies and built his own rehabilitation program. By 2023 he could stagger a few steps without crutches.

Huang, a former schoolmate he had planned to marry in October 2020, bought an expensive pair of running shoes early on and left them by his bed, Guangdong broadcaster GDToday reported. When his disability made him self-conscious, she told him he was not limping, only walking a rougher road than most, he told the Global Times.

Wang trained in the arts rather than engineering, though he had picked up some programming while running a chain of children's art schools in Shenzhen. He taught himself embedded development, circuit soldering, 3D printing and AI algorithms. He produced a mirror that analyzes rehabilitation movements, an exoskeleton for leg lifts, and insoles that stimulate the nerves in his toes.

At the hackathon, experienced developers told him a brain-controlled wheelchair was beyond a weekend build, GDToday reported. He switched to a mind-controlled lamp instead, burned out a circuit board, and went back to the wheelchair.

The prototype reads electrical activity through a headband of surface electrodes, shaped like the golden circlet worn by the Monkey King in "Journey to the West." Wang told the Global Times the device is not a high-tech novelty. It is "simply to open a window for those who are utterly unable to express themselves."

That first version could only travel forward in a straight line. By July it could turn, take commands in several directions, and switch on lights, cameras and air conditioners, Beijing Youth Daily reported. At a RedNote forum during the AI conference, a wheelchair user from the audience drove it by thought after a few minutes of coaching.

Moving from electrical muscle stimulation devices to exoskeletons and then to the brain interface, Wang and Huang have brought comparable equipment down from upwards of CNY100,000 ($14,800) to between CNY20,000 and CNY30,000.

Wang told Southern Metropolis Daily in May that Shenzhen made the work possible. The city's components supply chain runs from sensors to chips. A dense network of open-source groups let a non-engineer move from drawing to working device.

He now plans a rehabilitation center fitted with electrical stimulation suits and exoskeletons.