Many of us were staying in the “BYB Barracks”—a beautiful AirBnB that would have been nice for 2-3 people but was a little cramped for 5, on the famous Knez Mihailova street (24 Knez Mihailova, to be exact). When we arrived at the AirBnB, the owner of the apartment, Sanvila Popovic, greeted us in a very friendly, gracious way. When I asked her if she was Serbian, she replied: “Yes, I was born in this building, and my grandfather was an architect who designed this building as well. His name is Branko Popovic, and you can read about him on Wikipedia. He was a bit of a polymath: an architect, the dean of engineering faculty at the University of Belgrade, and a surrealist painter. Unfortunately, with the rise of the communist party in Yugoslavia, he was arrested and killed for his political views in 1944. I never had the chance to know him.”
Given such an interesting, tragic, and personal story that she shared with us, we became text-message friends with Sanvila, exchanging messages about Serbian culture, things to do in Belgrade, and even texting her when we visited the National Gallery in Belgrade and saw some of the paintings of her grandfather Branko.
This summer, we’ve beat our own record: in just under two weeks, 20 high-schoolers created nine projects using what is shaping up to be our most creative neuroscience kit ever!
The tool (or should we say meta-tool?) called Neuro:Bit lets you build brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) that work using your body’s electrical signals. Depending on the project, you can design and 3D-print the case of a desired BMI, integrate with an existing gadget such as bluetooth headphones, or even cut the case out of cardboard. What you need are two things: a Neuro:Bit to pick up your body’s electrical signals that power the interface, and one or more Micro:Bits, the famed microcontrollers designed by Microsoft and BBC, to add more functionality.
This summer school was the first time the Neuro:Bit was let into the wild. Straight away, it demonstrated an ability to integrate different disciplines. “It’s another of our democratic tools where neuroscience overlaps with electrical engineering, physical science, math, anatomy, so you can easily inject or sprinkle neuroscience into the classroom. When you look at things that inspire people, it’s all interdisciplinary and it’s all about collaborations between individuals rather than competition,” says Alex Hatch, our product designer, inventor and roboticist.
So who are the kids who gave a whirl to Neuro:Bit this summer? They all come from Belgrade or thereabouts, and most of them had little to no prior experience with programming or building things. Yet it didn’t stop them from creating their very own BMIs with the help of several undergraduates from the University of Michigan as well as our resident scientists. “It tooks them just a few days to go from zero to making computers that do amazing stuff,” our co-founder Dr. Greg Gage points out. “Last year, we developed a whole bunch of neuroscience experiments. But this year, we decided to do something different. We’re going to use the info that comes out of the brain (through muscles, eyes, heart) and have them take that info and convert it into a creative devices. It lays on the creativity aspect.”
The kids worked in 2 separate cohorts, having only five days each to build their machines from scratch. All the projects are now getting written up in our docs repository, along with full tutorials as well as Python/Java Script codes and ready-made STL files for 3D printing. Meanwhile, here’s a foretaste of what you can expect!
Move aside, air guitars! Thanks to one of our latest projects, it is now possible to air-conduct music so that it actually changes in tempo and volume as you move your arms.
This so-called neuro:baton is just one of 12 cool projects being developed on our 2024 Summer Research Fellowship that’s firing up as we speak. Within the following two weeks, 20 high-schoolers will be designing and/or honing these experiments in small teams. Like last year, this Fellowship is happening in Belgrade, Serbia. Also like last year, it will result in a handful of brand new experiments—some to be published in our new book on the inner workings of our mind and consciousness!
Others will hopefully make it to reputable peer-reviewed journals. (Yes, we can’t get enough of high-schoolers publishing papers ever since we nailed it on our first try.)
The talented kids recruited from Belgrade’s high schools are being mentored by two tiers of support: four undergraduates from the University of Michigan who piloted some of these experiments, plus our resident scientists and engineers.
This is Sofia, one of the undergrad mentors and designer of the neuro:baton.
But making your arm muscles mightier than Herbert von Karajan’s isn’t the only thing our Fellows are working on. Other projects include:
a robotic keyboard that’s to be controlled by leg muscles,
Spiker-Man armband that flings web when you flex your fingers,
glasses that detect your eye blinks,
and more…
Say Hello to neuro:bit
You’ve guessed it by now: there’s a new gizmo in the Backyard Brains toolbox. It’s called neuro:bit, and it’s a tool that lets anyone easily build brain-machine interfaces (BMIs, also called BCIs or brain-computer interfaces). It interfaces with electrical signals from your body, and integrates with micro:bit, BBC’s award-winning educational microcomputer!
The only other thing you need is our standard orange cable with 2 recording electrodes and a ground.
We’re putting together a repository with product documentation and experiments, where the new experiments will be added too. Check it out here, and stay tuned for more BYB news!
