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Monkey Think, Robot Do

Posted by Hemos on from the creating-the-machine dept.

moximus writes "Today's Wall Street Journal details an experiment conducted by Duke University that utilized microwires implanted in a monkey's brain to move a robot arm 600 miles away at MIT. Apparently, after months of recording associations between monkey arm movement and brain activity, the computer can now predict what motion the monkey will make about one second before its arms actually moves, allowing the robot arm to mimic the monkey in real time. Free 30 day trial required on Wall Street, but it's mentioned that the experiment will be described fully this Thursday in Nature Magazine"

6 of 9 comments (clear)

  1. endless possibilities by Tyriphobe · · Score: 3
    If they can now hook the monkeys up to a good VR system, imagine the cool things you could do. Since I'm in a particularly sick mood today, the first thing I imagined was giant, monkey-controlled robot combat - hook two monkey up to robots and show them something that gets them really mad. That would be way better than Battle Bots, for my money. Monkeys make everything better.

    I'm not just a sicko, though, I'm looking forward to the Nature article. It'll be interesting to see what they have to say about learning to predict the arm movement, and what that shows about brain activity/activation potential stuff.

  2. And... by effer · · Score: 4

    ...the robot arm promptly flung dung 600miles back to the researchers!

  3. obviously, this is the first step towards... by Tumbleweed · · Score: 2

    Mechanically-enhanced death monkeys! Right on. Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes) would be quite pleased.

    See, kids, science _can_ be interesting!

  4. What's this research for? by billybob2001 · · Score: 2

    Can these robot arms punch ballot papers?

  5. Story on CNN also (no reg. req.) by VSarkiss · · Score: 3

    Here it is.
    No annoying pop-ups either.

  6. Now all I need is a million of these by twjordan · · Score: 2
    Finally I can't recompile the complete works of Shakespeare in my own home without having to deal with monkey shit!

    Even better, lets put these in all the monkeys and have them try to find intelligent life outside the solar system.

    Do I even need to mention Beowulf clusters?

    tony