{"id":6266,"date":"2026-05-07T09:39:39","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T07:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/neuro-x.epfl.ch\/en\/news\/n-pulse-puts-students-on-track-for-the-2028-cybathlon\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T09:39:39","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T07:39:39","slug":"n-pulse-puts-students-on-track-for-the-2028-cybathlon","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/neuro-x.epfl.ch\/en\/news\/n-pulse-puts-students-on-track-for-the-2028-cybathlon\/","title":{"rendered":"N-Pulse puts students on track for the 2028 Cybathlon"},"content":{"rendered":"

The various systems being developed under N-Pulse include a helmet that can read brain activity, a bracelet for decoding muscle movements, a haptic feedback accessory and a bionic prosthetic arm. These EPFL student projects are being supported by the MAKE initiative and will be presented at the next Cybathlon \u2013 an international competition held in Switzerland during which teams test robotic devices to help the disabled with everyday tasks.<\/p>\n

\u201cMAKE projects require students to set a firm deadline in order to keep us focused, so we decided to enter the next Cybathlon, which will take place in 2028,\u201d says Evan Massonnet, the N-Pulse vice president and a master\u2019s student in Neuro-X. \u201cThat gives us time to take our projects forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Jenny Pai, William Schmid, and Charles Stockman are highly motivated
to develop brain-computer interfaces.
2026 EPFL\/Alain Herzog - CC-BY-SA 4.0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

The idea for N-Pulse came about when the team behind EPFL\u2019s Discovery Learning Labs (DLLs), which oversee student projects, brought in experts including School of Engineering professor Mahsa Shoaran and Mohammad Ali Shaeri, both from EPFL\u2019s Integrated Neurotechnologies Laboratory at Campus Biotech. \u201cWe immediately came on board after seeing how excited the students were about creating brain-computer interfaces,\u201d says Shoaran. \u201cOur research group works directly on these kinds of interfaces, designing both the hardware and software.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ali Shaeri, an expert in algorithms and hardware, supervised several student projects under the DLL program, including those by Massonnet and Roman Danylovych. The two students were subsequently joined by Charles Stockman, and the team founded N-Pulse, which became part of the MAKE initiative. N-Pulse now has around 50 members, with Ali Shaeri serving as the lead scientist and main coordinator. \u201cNeural interfaces often require an invasive procedure, and the non-invasive options currently available are quite complicated technically,\u201d says Stockman. He also points out that neurotechnology draws on a number of fields including materials science, electronics, signal processing, mechanical engineering, software programming and artificial intelligence to interpret the brain signals.<\/p>\n

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Evan Massonnet, Elodie Dubois, William Schmid, and Charles Stockman are investigating
the information needed for an effective and personalized prosthesis.
2026 EPFL\/Alain Herzog - CC-BY-SA 4.0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the biggest challenges of these student projects is designing the assistive devices. What features should a prosthesis have in order to be truly practical? What information is needed to perform the right movements and exert the right amount of pressure? \u201cIf a wearer wants to pick up their phone, it\u2019s important that the phone can\u2019t slip between the fingers,\u201d says Massonnet. Miniaturization is also essential: \u201cThe headsets we\u2019re using for our research are huge \u2013 I doubt anyone would actually want to wear one to control their prosthesis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another key issue relates to the safety of batteries attached to the body. \u201cThe devices need to be lightweight because patients with an amputated hand, for example, rarely use their bicep muscles,\u201d says Christophe Hreich, a second-year bachelor\u2019s student in microengineering who\u2019s developing a robotic wrist. \u201cWe\u2019re learning by trial and error, and each iteration \u2013 I\u2019m now on my fifth one \u2013 gets us one step closer to a viable solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe learn by testing, making mistakes, and starting over,\u201d explains Christophe Hreich.
2026 EPFL\/Alain Herzog - CC-BY-SA 4.0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Given all the aspects involved \u2013 design, safety, miniaturization and data analysis \u2013 \u201cif the students manage to pull everything together into a coherent system, that will already be a great achievement,\u201d says Ali Shaeri. The students are taking an open-source approach, which is a big advantage. \u201cThat means they can experiment freely, design their own equipment and make their technology available to the broader scientific and medical communities,\u201d says Shoaran. In addition, as more people use the open-source data, they will generate even more data, which in turn can be used to improve the algorithms. \u201cThis is a general trend we\u2019re seeing in neuro-AI decoding \u2013 more systems are being made public, which is leading to more sophisticated and powerful models,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

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The safety of the batteries, attached to the body, is another issue.
2026 EPFL\/Alain Herzog - CC-BY-SA 4.0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

The N-Pulse students are also being advised on questions related to ethics, on testing their systems and on working with potential users. \u201cWe need to collect personal data for our devices, so there are a lot of hoops to jump through,\u201d says Massonnet. The students have to map out how these data will be processed, who will be involved and whether the data subjects will be adults or children, for example. Not to mention the slew of regulations: those issued by EPFL, by the cantonal government, by the Campus Biotech ethics committee and by the research group supervising the projects. \u201cGetting all the ethics-related approvals is tedious and stressful, but it\u2019s also a learning experience and gives us a taste of the regulatory framework for the biomedical industry,\u201d says Massonnet.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":6267,"template":"","project":[],"faculty":[],"public":[],"themes":[],"news-category":[38],"class_list":["post-6266","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-category-epfl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neuro-x.epfl.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/6266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neuro-x.epfl.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neuro-x.epfl.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neuro-x.epfl.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neuro-x.epfl.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"project","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neuro-x.epfl.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project?post=6266"},{"taxonomy":"faculty","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neuro-x.epfl.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/faculty?post=6266"},{"taxonomy":"public","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neuro-x.epfl.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/public?post=6266"},{"taxonomy":"themes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neuro-x.epfl.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/themes?post=6266"},{"taxonomy":"news-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neuro-x.epfl.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-category?post=6266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}