LIS & CLIS - Locked In Syndrome and Complete Locked in State

Our founder was dramatically motivated to try to find a solution for those people suffering from Locked-in Syndrome (LIS) and Complete Locked-in State (CLIS), starting with caring for a young adult in 1990 as a nurse's aide and LPN trainee, at Doxie Hatch Medical Center, and additionally for many others with various injuries and neurological disorders as a habilitation therapist at Hillcrest Care Center. Ever since he has wanted to figure out a way to use technology to help them reconnect socially, set them free of their physical prisons of the active minds trapped in their bodies, and gain back some of their lives.

The goal, and real-world metrics test, is if someone with profound disabilities, including experiencing locked-in syndrome (LIS) or complete locked-in state (CLIS), can be freed from their prison to engage socially in complex multiplayer social cooperative problem-solving role-playing games.

Program phases and updates on our live streams and Github: https://github.com/RPG-Research/

Ultimate in RPG Accessibility and Immersion 

The ultimate in accessibility potential is through the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) technologies based on Electroencephalogram (EEG) technologies, integrating with AR & VR, (and eventually back into the physical world through robotics), literally allowing a person to interface with computer systems purely with the thoughts of their brain.

Also, when linked with haptics, robotics, AR, VR, and other technologies it is the potential in ultimate immersive experiences.

We have been hard at work experimenting with EEG and BCI equipment with music and RPGs since 2004.

Since 2019 our research and development team have been working on Project Ilmatar - https://github.com/rpgresearch/erpg/wiki - an opensource, online, multiplayer, turn-based, cooperative-play, electronic, role-playing game designed from the ground up for maximal accessibility including BCI control support.

Update Fall 2020, migrated to organization Github, moving our content from the previous individual Git: https://github.com/RPG-Research

As usual, our projects are little-known, long-running, and have almost no funding. It is thanks to our wonderful volunteers worldwide that we accomplish anything. We hope some day perhaps to have more support financially, but for now we keep leading in innovations thanks to the wonderful efforts of these generous people helping a few hours every week, and we share openly with the world in the truest form of opensource, following our philosophy of "the rising tide of shared knowledge floats all boats" to help improve the human condition globally.

While the software is free, the hardware we have to purchase to realize this technology fully is expensive. We are currently utilizing OpenBCI which still costs from hundreds to even thousands of dollars per headset. The RPG Research board approved $2,500 USD to purchase the full R&D bundle from OpenBCI. We are now working from two directions. The software side and the hardware side, working toward full integration.

We also hope to loop back from the virtual world and integrate robotic devices controlled through BCI equipment to enable participants with disabilities to more fully engage in all role-playing game formats.

We stream the development meetings live each week on Saturdays from 10 am to Noon PST8PDT: https://youtube.com/rpgresearch 

If you miss the live stream, Patreon supporters get access to the recorded videos at least a month before the general public as a thank you for their donation support.  https://patreon.com/rpgresearch