Ahead of the recent Super Bowl weekend, eight-year-old Clifford Lester grew excited about making one of the game’s most popular snacks: popcorn. Except in this case, Clifford made those kernels pop using only the power of his brain.
Clifford, who is better known as “Cliffy,” is non-verbal and requires assistance with most aspects of his life. Earlier this month, surrounded by his mom and staff at the John McGivney Children’s Centre School Authority in Windsor, Ont., Cliffy used a special technology that translates brain activity into commands. The software ties an action to an active thought, which means Cliffy could set the machine in motion by imagining a big smile.
As his imagination took shape, the headset attached to Cliffy sent information to the brain-computer interface (BCI) technology that then triggered the popcorn machine. And just like that, kernels turned into edible fluffy puffs – pop-pop-pop.
“Any time he gets to experience something that he generally doesn’t get to do, that’s filled with all kinds of joy and laughter,” said his mother, Rosemary Borland.
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