A neural suit: up to 288 electrodes and 84 inertial units, 40 of them in the two gloves, on a suit you put together from pieces like a sleeve, a trouser leg, the torso or a headband.
The muscles' own signals and the body's motion go to a computer in the backpack, a Radxa ROCK 5T with its own NPU or up to two Hailo-10H AI accelerators, and the whole body becomes the controller for a computer or a game.
Coming soon™. Well — not that soon.
Beta 0.4: a concept at the design stage, nothing is built yet; what is closed, what is open and what is only an estimate is under Status.
A suit covered in electrodes and motion sensors. It is made of pieces: a sleeve, a trouser leg, the torso, a headband around the head and more. Each piece is a module of its own, and you can join pieces in any combination. A bigger suit is simply more pieces on the same bus. Each wearer takes only the pieces that make sense for them, a quadriplegic for instance. It measures the body alone, the muscles (EMG) and the motion (IMUs), on one time base.
- First, a controller. The one thing every suit needs is the detecting unit, Baťa, and he acts only as a controller, so the suit can be connected to a computer, a smart TV, anything; the computer worked on is Borovičok. Playing games, drawing in AutoCAD, programming, writing messages: all of it standing, walking in a meadow, on a park bench.
- Second, rehabilitation. A suit that precise can catch the signals of an injured or disabled person's muscles; a doctor sees them, says what they show and sets the load, this arm more, that less. An aid beside the doctor, not a certified medical device.
- Beside them, the assistants (below), programs on Baťa that use the headband.
How we know it works: as a controller, the wearer does real work in place of a mouse and a keyboard, draws a part in AutoCAD, writes a message, plays a game, standing and walking alike, and after each putting on a short calibration is enough, since the suit is never put on the same way twice; for rehabilitation, a doctor tells from the record which muscle works and how hard, side against side and day against day, and it agrees with what the doctor finds by examining.
What it must do, in ranges: the EMG at 3,840 SPS, its band to ~1 kHz, for fast movements in sport and for the twitches of a nervous system that does not work as it should, 1,920 SPS a setting to try; the IMUs in steps of 120 Hz; tens of milliseconds at most from a muscle to the output; gestures for a computer and the joints' angles, wrong by units of degrees; a calibration of a few minutes at most; a working day, ~8 h, on one charge in the smaller fittings; sweat and light rain, not immersion. The weight and the price are to be seen.
"Tomography", in quotes: not every electrode against every other, which no eight channels could give, but channels that each take a mix of muscles. A channel's two electrodes lie 4–8 cm apart where the muscle allows, on neighbouring muscles or along one, along the fibres and across them by turns, and across the spine only diagonally, so that the chords cross; farther apart they would gather more crosstalk and, on the trunk, more of the heart. Against a reference electrode, the second way on the same suit, every module's eight electrodes measure each against one point, and any pair of them is formed in software. On the hand and the foot each pair sits on a muscle of its own; the palm, the sole and the seat stay bare, as they are pressed on.
The reason is that you never put the suit on exactly the same way twice. So we don't follow an exact point on the body. We follow how signals resemble each other and how they evolve. Whether it works we do not know; studies suggest it might (see Bogatyr).
| part | what it is |
|---|---|
| Rubaška | the suit itself: the pieces with their sensing modules, the glove Vešč, the electrodes and the harness |
| Bogatyr | the layout on the body: where every electrode and IMU sits, muscle by muscle, and why |
| Nataša | the unit in the headband: headphones, two microphones, vibration and buttons |
| Mamka | the base board: the clock for the whole suit, the sound bridge, the line drivers and the suit's power |
| Baťa | the computer in the backpack, a Radxa ROCK 5T, with Umnica, the Hailo-10H, or its own NPU alone |
| Terem | the board under the ROCK 5T: its two Hailo-10H with a supply each |
| Babuška | the battery and its BMS, the hard-shell backpack, the power variants |
| Porjadok | what holds for every module: processor, firmware, links between boards |
| software | the code: the protocols as Python codecs with tests, later the firmware and Baťa's programs |
Mamka is Russian slang for a motherboard, and the rest of the backpack joined her family. The names are Russian, written in Latin letters the Czech way:
| who | meaning | what it does |
|---|---|---|
| Mamka | mum | the base board: runs the suit and feeds her own children, the Rebjata |
| Baťa | dad, and in slang the boss | computer A: a ROCK 5T, with Mamka on his header |
| Umnica | the clever daughter | the Hailo-10H, who does the thinking for dad |
| Terem | the daughters' upper chamber | the board in the ROCK 5T's two M.2 slots: both Umnicas with a supply each |
| Babuška | grandma | the battery: she keeps the pantry, and everyone eats from her |
| Ključnica | the housekeeper with the keys | the BMS: she holds the keys to Babuška's pantry |
| Kormilica | the wet nurse | Mamka's power section: her supply, the lines' converters, the computers' eFuses |
| Borovičok | the old mushroom man, Babuška's husband | computer B, if wanted: a full computer beside Baťa over Ethernet, with the glasses and the programs |
| Ďaďa Sem | Uncle Sam, the uncle from America | the cameras that watch everything: two USB cameras into Baťa, read by his second Umnica, in the small and normal fittings by his own NPU |
| Budilnik | the alarm clock | the start button and its latch: one press wakes the household, and when everyone has shut down it lets the house go dark |
| Storož (Tron) | the night watchman | Baťa's halt daemon: on a fatal fault he stops the household's services, keeps the terminal open and says why |
| Kommunalka | a communal flat | the backpack: the whole family lives in it and shares one kitchen, Babuška |
| Chodiki | the wall clock with weights | the suit's clock, which the whole household lives by |
On the body, the suit is Rubaška, the shirt you are born in, on Kaščej, the harness; where everything sits on it is Bogatyr, Kaščej dressed in the meat. Mamka's own children, the Rebjata (the sensing modules), hang on the Pupovina, the umbilical cord: the eight lines, one a piece of the suit, that bring power, the clock and data to them, to the gloves and to Nataša and Míša. Every sensing unit's main processor is a Staršaja, the elder; the glove, Vešč, has her younger brothers, the Bratiški, on its fingers. The household's rules are the Porjadok, and its power, from Babuška down, the Pitanije.
The pieces combine freely:
| piece | variant | what it is |
|---|---|---|
| Baťa | small | Mamka on his header, the model on his own NPU, no Terem |
| Baťa | normal, brutal | Mamka on his header, Terem in his two slots with one or two Umnicas |
| the power | 5 A | the BMS lets out 5 A: Baťa alone |
| the power | 10 A | the BMS lets out 10 A: Baťa and Borovičok, with room to spare |
- Baťa small, 5 A: a small suit, a headband and a few modules, the least power.
- Baťa with Terem, 5 A: one or two Umnicas, and in his brutal fitting the whole system with glasses on his USB-C.
- Baťa and Borovičok, 10 A: Baťa runs only the suit, and Borovičok is a full computer with the glasses; the suit is his mouse and keyboard.
The details are under Baťa and Babuška, and why each name under Names.
Nataša is the hardware in the headband; the assistants are programs on Baťa that use it, each with a name of its own. They need no electrodes, so for them the headband and the backpack (Mamka, Baťa and Babuška) are enough, without the sensing modules. Only Míša adds hardware of his own: a unit on the forehead with a radar, ultrasound and an IMU, with a place of his own on line 8 beside Nataša.
| assistant | what it does |
|---|---|
| Soňa | for the deaf: listens all the time and tells by vibration what is happening around |
| Míša | the watchdog: a radar and ultrasound watch for obstacles and warn through the headphones and the headband |
| Taťána | writes and reads: types what you dictate and reads text aloud, books included |
| Nikita | rhythm you can feel: the beat of the music as vibration |
| Pomoščnik | the helper: looks at a part, reads its marking and finds it, with the glasses and the cameras |
They run as modes, switched on as needed. At a social event or anywhere with many people, and when walking with a companion, Míša and Soňa stay off: the companion guides, close contact would set Míša off all the time, and an alarm shows in how the people around react.
To the AI assistant Claude (Anthropic), a big help in the whole project: the suit is designed with AI, and these pages were written with it.
The software under the MIT licence, see LICENSE; the hardware design, the pages and the pictures, under the CERN-OHL-P v2, see LICENSE-HW.