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Robotic Arm Controlled By Monkey Thoughts

Posted by Zonk on from the next-step-is-cyber-monkeys dept.

mallumax writes "The BBC reports that Pittsburgh University scientists have succeeded in creating a robotic arm, controlled by probes inserted into the brain of monkeys. The probes interpret signals from individual nerve cells in the motor cortex. Monkeys were able to grasp and hold food with the robotic arm. Since the number of nerve signals for even small movements is huge the scientists used an averaging algorithm to obtain the movement signals."

8 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. That's not my hand on your ass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's my monkey controlled robot arm's hand on your ass.

  2. Nipple Fettish by BlurredWeasel · · Score: 5, Funny

    As long as the monkey doesn't have a nipple fetish I think we'll be fine.

  3. Sealab quote by Chairboy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is there such thing as an obligatory Sealab 2021 quote yet?

    News Anchor: Scientists have successfully transplanted little Jango's brain into a robot monkey body. on a sad note, however, Jambo died late last night after drinking his own urine.

    Sparks: Hey, Skip. What do you think about all this robot stuff?

    Murphy: Why? Are we under attack?!

    Sparks: No..but that robot monkey on the news..

    Murphy: You're kidding! That guy's a robot monkey?

  4. Re:And for the next version... by Stanistani · · Score: 5, Funny

    From the article:
    "Our biggest problem is durability of the probes. Typically they last for about six months."

    I'd say a bigger problem is that to make this work, you have to stick friggin' needles into the brain!

    How about some sort of non-invasive sensor cap as the "next step."

    --
    You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
  5. I imagine it can hurl by saddino · · Score: 4, Funny

    shit at blindingly fast speeds. Ex-cellent.

  6. Now we can make new arms for monkeys... by bcmm · · Score: 4, Funny

    we can teach them to type!
    This will do wonders for the quality of discussion on Slashdot. CmdrTaco, if your reading this, please give extra mod points to non-human /.ers.

    --
    # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
    Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
  7. Old adage proven true by mdxi · · Score: 4, Funny

    The article says the team's biggest problem is that after about 6 months tissue grown begins to interfere with transmission of signals to the probe.

    This will no doubt limit the adoption of monkey cyborgs in RTOS and embedded spaces, and proves the old adage, "Always mount a scratch monkey".

    --
    Posted with Mozilla
  8. And... by ZeroConcept · · Score: 5, Funny

    When given pen and paper, it wrote down:

    "Developers, developers, developers!!!!"