The Elche Engineer Who Has Managed to Light Bulbs with His Mind

Turning on and moving objects with thoughts is possible thanks to the research of the graduate from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Sergio Martínez Aznar. The young man from Elche has created a system based on neuroscience principles, allowing a person to perform specific actions solely with the electrical activity generated by their brain.

Moreover, this device does not require surgical operations or invasive devices, as it works through electrodes placed on the scalp. The invention operates through thoughts.

This is made possible by the electroencephalogram placed on the user's head, which connects wirelessly to a bulb. The wires, connected via an external battery to a laptop, send the electrical signal to a virtual program that translates thoughts into the signals needed by the smart bulb to turn on.

It is in the program created by Martínez where the supposed magic happens, and in reality, it is science and data, not fantastic tricks. "What I did was train the system to classify simple thoughts; we cannot understand how the connections are, but Artificial Intelligence can decipher them and create a pattern," declares the young researcher.

This model raises various questions. One of them concerns the security and privacy of people who might use the program, as Sergio comments, "you cannot control what you think, and in the end, you might have intrusive thoughts."

To prevent compromising information about users from being revealed, he has developed the program so that no data is uploaded to the cloud, but stored on a hard drive.

On the other hand, the major limitation of the model is that it has been trained exclusively with Sergio's thoughts. This poses a potential problem because not everyone thinks the same way, even if they are thinking about the same thing. "For example, if I tell you to think of green, you might not imagine a flat green but think of plants, leaves, or things that remind you of the colour," explains the Elche native.

This problem can be solved with investment. If a company is interested in the model, it could provide the necessary funds to scale the number of data and achieve a more powerful and trained base that can decipher the same thought through different means.

Moreover, with this variety of data, the invention would also become inclusive for neurodivergent individuals: "A person with high abilities, schizophrenia, or hyperactivity has a different way of thinking, so it is important to reinforce the model with more diversity," explains Martínez.

Regarding its application in the professional world, the engineer is clear: "I believe it can be achieved and can help people in their daily lives, for example, someone who is hospitalised and cannot move could request help autonomously."

He insists that to achieve this, the model needs to be trained with more subjects, as right now, for it to work, you would have to ask the patient to imagine a specific situation similar to what the person who trained the AI, in this case, Sergio, is thinking.

The project received an Honours grade and was so well-regarded by its evaluators that they expressly requested that this work not be "kept in a drawer." Now the Elche native indicates that "after my time at UPV, I would like to explore the possibility of scaling this project commercially in the near future, seeing that engineers are also needed in hospitals."

Currently, he is in contact with friends who have studied biotechnology and computer engineering to bring the model to real-life circumstances that help conduct studies on its applied functioning in specific situations.

Sergio is optimistic about its use: "I am not afraid that people won't be interested because, in the end, I believe it is necessary for hospitals to have an engineer; COVID demonstrated this, and that is why I believe the idea can be implemented somewhere."

This is not the only achievement in the young man's career, as while studying for his Higher Degree, he placed second in the national cybersecurity competition 'National Cyberleague'. He has also participated in the TEDx Youth organised by Professor David Pla. He now thanks his professor and thesis advisor, Antonio Molina Picó, for helping him make his experiment a reality.