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Controlling Robots with the Mind
loucura! writes "Scientific American has a fairly technical article on the real-time control of robotic limbs using recorded neuron patterns. The researcher's macaque has simultaneously controlled two robotic arms in addition to its own arm motion. The amazing thing? One of the arms was 600 miles away. So, they transmitted and translated the "commands" into motion in less than 300 milliseconds!" It's still a long ways off from helping the disabled or making a Dr. Octopus suit, but the potential uses are pretty cool.
No, the amazing thing was that they successfully decoded the neural impulses of the monkey's motor cortex and generated commands that drove a robotic arm in sync with the monkey's arm.
Who gives a shit if they also sent those signals 600 miles away? Let me introduce you to something called the Internet...
I don't understand the fascination with the 600 mile separation. The people who need to control things directly with their neurons are going to be much more interested in manipulating their immediate environment. Anyway, these days aren't the next room and 600 miles pretty much equivalent?
Two things in this study did strike me as amazing though. One is that the connection has lasted a year. I remember when they first started this the neural connection didn't last long. The other is the fact that the monkey took only a few days to figure out that she didn't have to use her hand and just had to think about moving the lever.
Wow, 600 hundred miles, that is 100 times more amazing than 6 miles away!
love is just extroverted narcissism
[obscure Mr. Show reference].
"I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq"
-- Paul Wolfowitz, 7/21/2003
At the current time, all they are doing with the robot arms is ape-ing (pun intended) the motion of the monkey's arm - the monkey is NOT using the robot arms to accomplish tasks. Rather, as the monkey uses it own arm to accomplish tasks, the robot arms are making the same motions. The monkey is no more "controlling" two arms in addition to her own than I would be controlling two computers just because I had VNC displaying the same thing on both computers.
In other experiments the researchers HAVE closed the loop, by using the brain activity to control a cursor on a screen the monkey can see. Thus, the control loop is closed: Screen feeds brain feeds computer feeds screen.
But until they can close the loop controlling the arm, by providing some form of tactile feedback, the system isn't very useful. That is their next step - closing the loop by stimulating the monkey's skin in proportion to the force the arm is experiencing.
Now, if they can combine this research with the work being done on rats to stimulate the sensation nerves, then they may have something that can help paraplegics. And given how plastic the brain is - how good the brain is at adapting to its feedback, then there is a good chance we might be able to make useful direct brain controlled limbs.
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Well, obviously this experiment proves that links between computers and brain tissue are quite possible and usable. In addition, it beats the pants off other experiments...like that one the air force had where human volunteers would try to move a simulator left and right. It took weeks of training for the humans to "train" their brains to give the correct signal most of the time.
In this case no training seems to be required...you just move your arm and the software is able to translate that. VERY IMPRESSIVE.
But there is a price to be paid : the monkey is wired with actual hardware in the brain. Face it, the V.R. systems of the future and the cyborgs will have to have actual surgically inserted wiring. To get that cool V.R. rig you'll have to have a major operation installing thousands of tiny wires to the nerves of your body.
I actually read that intro as:
It's still a long ways off from helping the disabled by making a Dr. Octopus suit
You shoulda seen what I was imagining...
Controlling robots with the mind? Pfft! I can levitate birds...
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
Reads like a hype article for the researchers who wrote it. At the end it says:
"In the two years since that day, our labs and several others have advanced neuroscience, computer science, micr..."
this was done 2 years ago, guys. it's old news.
wake up, johnny, i feel a hurricane comin' on!
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
It'd really be much cooler if the monkey controlled the robots with it's mind, and was in turn controlled by me, through marionette strings. It's beyond science; it's art.
Seriously, though, doesn't this raise the very real potential problem of armies of robots, mechanically flinging monkey poo?
And imagine a beow . . . Oh, never mind. I'll shut up now.
Maybe someone else saw the recent issue of Wired magazine (maybe a month or two back) where some mad scientist-type was able to wire a camera up to a blind patients brain, and through the use of a program that would 'learn' what effects certain signals it would put out on the guys visual cortex had, could then begin to replicate a pretty decent field of vision (albeit at very low resolution).
Well, it seems that scientists are getting somewhat proficient at interpreting brain signals and even providing direct-to-brain feedback. The reality of this is actually amazing. It's the stuff of science fiction, but immersive systems (the Matrix, anyone?) might not be so far fetched anymore. The stuff from 80's cyberpunk fiction where everyone is walking around with jacks in their heads might not be so far off. But then again, flying cars shouldn't be so far off either but you don't see many of those either.
From the article: In the two years since that day,...
The incident in question happened two years ago - I guess I'm not the only one who submits articles here only to see them "pending" for a long time. But I'm not bitter.
I'd rather it was "Controlling the Mind with Robots".
To me, the most amazing part of the article is on page 5:
If visual and tactile sensations mimic the information that usually flows between Aurora's own arm and brain, long-term interaction with a BMI could possibly stimulate her brain to incorporate the robot into its representations of her body--schema known to exist in most brain regions. In other words, Aurora's brain might represent this artificial device as another part of her body. Neuronal tissue in her brain might even dedicate itself to operating the robot arm and interpreting its feedback.
So, not only could you teach your brain to replace a damaged limb with a prosthetic one, but you could potentially teach your brain to operate a totally *new* limb! How cool would that be??
And the whole idea of remotely controlling limbs makes me think that the concept of Hector from Saturn 3 [www.imdb.com] probably seemed far-fetched at the time, but starts to be less and less so...
Have EVDO, will travel.
The amazing thing? One of the arms was 600 miles away. So, they transmitted and translated the "commands" into motion in less than 300 milliseconds!"
That sounds very similar to moving a character around in an online game. 300 milliseconds is nothing as far as transmission speed goes. A 300 ping in an online game is awful (even with a 56k modem!) Somehow, I doubt that most of that 300 milliseconds was taken up by transmissing the data 600 miles. More likely, most of that time was actually taken up by computations.
Closing the loop is important. John Donoghue's lab at Brown has done that in its monkey work, and it was published recently (last few months, I think), and is so far the best (IMHO) work towards having the brain control an external interface.
Nicolelis and Chapin have had huge successes in their rodent implants, but their primate work is still coming. They are extremely technically proficient, and I expect much progress from them.
The litmus test I would use is if a researcher can implant a primate, teach it to use its brain to control an external interface, and have it work for more than a month with the animal progressively improving. So far, the first has been done by many, the second only by Donoghue, and the third by none. That is the obstacle, and the challenge ahead. Implants are not as easy as rocket science.
It would be great to be able to attach artificial limbs that worked right off of one's brainwaves (so long as there wasn't interference or somebody yanking your wire by accident).
Another important thing they'll need to figure out is how to get and interpret feedback. That is, to allow for the sense of feeling from the hand/etc being moved to be translated back to the brain. I think to some extent it's been done already, and one thing nicer than having a robotic hand would be having a robotic hand you can feel with.
disclaimer: I claim no responsibility those who respond to this post with comments of a sexual or otherwise immature nature - phorm/I.
I wonder if this technology could be adapted, so that as a person thinks of a letter, the sensors could translate the neuron pattern into an ASCII code. Imagine typing without the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome.