Honda creates thought-controlled android
Asimo gets smarter
Remember Asimo, Honda’s stair-climbing android? It's back and this time the robot can be controlled by human thoughts.
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Collaboration between Honda’s Research Institute of Japan, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International and the Shimadzu Corporation has resulted in what’s claimed to be the world’s first Brain Machine Interface (BMI) technology able to steer a robot by thought alone.
By placing sensors that measure “slight electrical current and blood flow changes” onto someone’s head, the team was able to make Asimo perform physical movements that had only been thought about by the sensor-clad human.
Sensors on the man's head tell Asimo how to move
A “newly developed information extraction technology” then enables statistical processing of data gathered by the two sensor technologies, effectively translating thoughts into control signals for the robot's motors.
The trio claimed the BMI technology is roughly 90 per cent accurate.
The thought process that controls Asimo
Honda and co. now plan to further develop the BMI technology for application to human-friendly products. ®
COMMENTS
date?
so which is the April fool - the story, or the link about Windows Mobile for Business?
/me remembers....
.....Firefox.....not the browser but the film with Clint Eastwood and a fighter jet that could only be effectively flown by somebody capable of thinking in Russian.
All of a sudden it seems less stupid.....
"The trio claimed the BMI technology is roughly 90 per cent accurate."
OK... what exactly does this mean? That if you think, "Move my left arm up 10 inches", it might move up 9 or it might move up 11? Or does it mean that 10% of the time it will move the right leg backward 10 inches instead? Hmm...
A friend of mine...
...has actually been working on Asimo for the past several years. Now I have final proof that he wants to build a huge Robot to fight the aliens that will invade Japan "very soon now(tm)" ;)
This tecnology could actually be quite useful for prostetics too, btw.
yay
We can have a thought powered light switch
Paris - Becuase in a world of thought she would be buggered
