A new study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience suggests that assistive robots may work best when they share control with their users, striking a middle-ground between full automation and manual operation. For people living with severe motor impairments such as from the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), everyday tasks like cooking, eating, or moving objects often require constant assistance from caregivers. While physically assistive robots have the potential to restore independence, many existing systems are limited to simple, pre-programmed tasks. Brain-robot interfaces, which allow users to control robots using brain signals, offer a promising alternative—but they are often noisy, slow, and difficult to use without help from the robot itself. Led by Hannah Douglas, researchers at Araya Inc. in Tokyo set out to design a system that could overcome these challenges. Their goal was to create a shared realistic virtual kitchen environment where two users could work alongside two mobile robots to complete tasks. The users would use a combination of brain signals via electroencephalography (EEG), muscle signals via electromyography (EMG), and eye-tracking to …