Boffins in live-monkey-brain robot weblink arms race
Mainly useful for banana-related tasks thus far
Battling scientists around the world are racing to be first to develop practical robots remotely controlled by harvested monkey brains over the internet.
The Times of India reports scarcely 48 hours ago that a living "monkey head" in North Carolina was able to "control a pair of robot legs in Japan via a web link".
"The method is important as it holds hope for paralysed people to walk again via brain signals," notes the Times.
Yes - it's plainly better to walk around on a pair of powerful droid legs controlled by the bodiless head of a (presumably quite angry) monkey on the other side of the world.
But the Times scribes were behind on the scoop. The joint Duke University/Kyoto team which developed the North Carolina monkey-brain internet robot hookup were by no means alone in the field.
Earlier this month, ScienceDaily revealed that rival boffins at Pittsburgh U have developed even more sophisticated simian-operated mechanoids. Using the same method of inserting electrodes into a live primate brain, the Pittsburgh team were able to achieve control of an arm and gripping hand.
Thus far, what the brain-plug droid has mainly chosen to do is pick up enticing pieces of fruit and give them to its master controller.
Of course, one of the handicaps of using monkey brains to control robotics is the difficulty of achieving non-banana-related tasks. Other boffins are seemingly moving more toward the more traditional human-brain-in-transparent-bubbling-jar approach.
Clearly this presents problems as not everyone is willing to have their living brain removed - or even have electrodes implanted in it - no matter how significantly the cause of science is advanced. However, crafty boffins in Washington found a way round this.
According to ScienceDaily:
The scientists recorded the brain activity of... patients in which electrodes were placed over the surface of their brain for reasons that were not connected to the purpose of the study.
Having happily found some people who had electrodes drilled into their heads anyway, the boffins were able to do some excellent experiments, apparently.
"This access provided us with insights that could not be obtained using other methods," one of them said, in understated style.
Other teams using monkeys are active in Chicago, and still others using "electrode caps" elsewhere. More amazing revelations can be expected soon.
It appears that futurologists have been too limited in their ideas. The human race of the future will be wiped out in an orgy of violence (and/or enslaved, farmed for our meat etc.) not by rebellious monkey butlers or revolting robots, but rather by an unholy Robocop-gone-bad-style combination of the two. Only the disembodied brains in jars and their opposing machine army can save us now. ®
COMMENTS
Dammit Laemi Qian....
That was the FIRST thing that popped into my head when I read the article...
Cheers to great minds (well, similar minds anyway) thinking alike. The type of minds that would be rejected for removal and implantation in some horribly ill-concieved RoboCop-esque scenario.
I, for one, welcome the advance of our simian-metallic, fecculant-wielding, banana-seeking overlords. Really.
I'm sure I saw...
Something like this on a docuentary ages ago - using monkeys with implanted electrodes to control a robot arm - they were hyping it back then as a great step towards being able to effectively replace an amputated limb with an advanced prosthetic controlled by impulses in the brain. They also had humans wearing a scalp cap with sensors in it to do the same thing.
According to the doco, the more electrodes/sensors in place the more accurate the reading and predictability of results - it seems that when moving limbs, neurons fire all across your brain so the more you can detect while a person is doing a task, the better you will be able to determine what is being requested by the brain activity - then the computer turns translates the impulses into a series of controls for the limb.
They, too, demonstrated that it could control limbs across a network link and mooted the idea of suitably equipped workers remotely dealing with hazardous materials with far greater precision and dexterity than is achievable with current remote waldos.
Once they get appropriate feedback from the devices, they would effectively have a sense of touch that would enable better control when handling different objects (like feeling exactly how hard you're squeezing that egg with your remote robotic hand.)
Another mooted idea was wearing a rig with a pair of robot limbs to supplement one's own natural limbs - now, a second pair of hands is something we've probably all wished for.
Shakje, I was not aware of that experiment. Thanks.
I hope they don't depend on certain UK ISPs
I obviously won't mention any names otherwise this post will never get published, but can you imagine losing your Internet connection (which happens rather frequently) just as you're trying to get your leg over or something. And so you phone their helpdesk and have to listen to some God-awful music after you've pressed '1', '2', '1' or whatever while your legs are twitching away and your object of desire's meter is running. And then you get through to Bombay and you have to give them your bank details and your date of birth and what you had for lunch, which your OoD is busy making notes of. And then a monkey takes over (on your legs, not the phone call) and does a better job of what you were hoping to be doing.
But I think I'd better retire. I'm getting too old for all this... No coat, just that Zimmer frame, thanks...
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Cloud based data management
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
SaaS data loss: The problem you didn’t know you had
What you need to know about cloud backup
