Benjamin Choi from Virginia builds brain-controlled prosthetic arm without surgery
17-year-old Benjamin Choi from Virginia has created a low-cost prosthetic arm that can be controlled with brain waves and head movements, without surgery.
Inspired by a childhood documentary, he started building his invention in his basement during the pandemic, using a $75 3-D printer and even fishing line.
Benjamin Choi's open-source $300 prosthetic
Choi's prosthetic costs just $300 and is open-source, so anyone can build it.
After more than 75 design tweaks, it now uses EEG sensors, with a baseline sensor that clips onto the earlobe and another on the forehead that collects EEG data.
The arm runs on an AI model with more than 23,000 lines of code and hits 95% accuracy.
Choi's work has already landed him as a finalist at the Regeneron Science Talent Search and earned support from MIT to keep innovating affordable, non-invasive prosthetics.