Slashdot Mirror
Computer Control, by Bug and by Brain
electric_mongoose writes "NewScientistTech has a fascinating story about a paralysed man who can control a computer and robot arm using electrodes implanted in his brain. The electrodes measure neural signals generated when he concentrates on trying to move one of his paralysed limbs and software translates these imagined gestures into the movement of an on-screen cursor or a robotic arm. Other researchers have also revealed a way to dramatically boost the efficiency of similar brain implants in monkeys."
If you don't have a handy human brain to play with, 9x320 writes points to a report on LiveScience of Wim van Eck's graduation project: a computer game similar to Pac-Man controlled, not by conventional computer code, but by the brain of an insect. From the article:"Instead of computer code, I wanted to have animals controlling the ghosts. To enable this, I built a real maze for the animals to walk around in, with its proportions and layout matching the maze of the computer game. The position of the animals in the maze is detected using colour-tracking via a camera, and linked to the ghosts in the game. This way, the real animals are directly controlling the virtual ghosts."
I'm pretty sure I read about this exact same thing a couple years ago...
The pacman game uses crickets, and when the player eats a powerpill, the floor under the player's spot vibrates, scaring crickets away.
(I assume not much happens when the player catches a fleeing ghost/cricket.)
I wish I thought of that.
And I guess this is appropriate... in sovie..nah, thats too easy.
Warning: Corny karma killing post above.
You stepped on blinky!
How do they do to make critters chase PacMan? Or they just don't and wonder around in the maze? I didn't find it on the article.
BBC submitted it with a better headline.
So from TFA about the insects controlling the ghosts, this doesn't sound as ground-breaking as the first FA... I mean sure the insects are "controlling the ghosts with their brains" but there really is no interaction with the computer at all... The insects are just recognized by the camera who then moves the ghosts in the game correspondingly... Isn't that just optical recognition of colors? Why over-hyped... Though I'm glad to see the advances being made towards better prosthetic limbs. My roommate lost his arm (right below the elbow) in a rock-crusher accident about 8 months ago and we're all still waiting for the day when we get the Star Wars quality prosthetic limbs... :D
We have already seen this in Professor Kevin Warwick
I'm not fat, just big boned...
paralysed man who can control control [sic] computer and robot arm using electrodes implanted in his brain.
Today's paralytic is tomorrow's cyborg. Children, be careful of whom you make fun.
Disclaimer: I personally advocate restraint in fun-making for "goodness sake" and not for fear of future retaliation. But there are those who think it cute to make fun of people with disabilities. Hopefully, a cyborg will eventually teach them that such behavior is not acceptable.
For anyone who hasn't heard of biomimicry, check out this reference: http://www.biomimicry.net/intro.html
s _roachb.html
The general idea is that all of human design and engineering in the future should try to mimic nature as closely as possible. The most controversial aspect of the theory is that anything we think we can come up with, nature has already figured out a *far* more elegant and sophisticated solution (not to mention ecologically balanced and sustainable), albeit not directly suited to our needs.
So this brain control technology is definitely cool, but nature has already done it:
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/03/wasp_perform
It's an article about how a specific wasp evolved the ability to sting a cockroach in such a way that it can override the motor control of the cockroach, but where the cockroach is not actually disabled (from the wasps' perspective of course). I'm sure if we did enough digging in nature, there is something even far more spectacular than that example.
"You made the hard choice, boy. But heaven knows there was no other way you could have done it. Congratulations. You beat them, and it's all over."
All over. Beat them. "I beat you, Mazer Rackham."
Mazer laughed, a loud laugh that filled the room. "Ender Wiggin, you never played me. You never played a game since I was your teacher."
Ender didn't get the joke. He had played a great many games, at a terrible cost to himself. He began to get angry.
Mazer reached out and touched his shoulder. Ender shrugged him off. Mazer then grew serious and said, "Ender Wiggin, for the last months you have been the commander of our fleets. There were no games. The battles were real. Your only enemy was the enemy. You won every battle. Ate every pellet. And finally today you fought them at their little box in the middle of the screen, and you destroyed them completely and even got all the little fruits, and they'll never come against us again. You did it. You."
The Nature paper about the guy who can open email, control an arm, etc. just by thinking is available as a free pdf here. Or just the abstract.
I don't have any links or otherwise to show as proof, but I worked on something related to this almost 8 years ago. I was doing my undergrad senior project at Georgia Tech and was following up on previous research done in the same program.
We were working with a quadraplegic who had implants that also measured brainwave activity and crudely mapped them to mouse movements - one "thought" was for X-axis, and another was for Y-axis. I say "crude" because, IIRC, the cursor could only go one way, and when it got to the edge of the window, it just kept wrapping around.
My particular project was helping enable him to speak, using icons that he could choose to string together enough words and phrases to talk.
I would have hoped that it would have progressed from that point in 8 years...
...crickets with frickin lasers attached to their heads!
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
at Pac-Man.
Gotta go out to the garage and find that can of Raid. . .
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Is this the same Wim van Eck that's known for van Eck phreaking; i.e. using radiation from a CRT to replicate what's being displayed on said CRT?
s id9_gci550525,00.html
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,289893,
"This term combines the name of Wim van Eck, who in 1985 authored an academic paper that described this form of electronic eavesdropping, with the term phreaking, the earlier practice of using special equipment to make phone calls without paying. Van Eck phreaking is identified in the U.S. government project known as Tempest and, although some information remains classified, has probably been used to spy on suspected criminals and in espionage."
This
Sony marketing droids, having confused this story with a Nintendo press-release, have announced that the PS3 controller "was going to have a mind-chip all along", and promised a barely functional demonstration model by early next week.
This would be a really neat interface for musical instruments.. just imagine, hook your head to a set of speakers and ROCK OUT! In all seriousness, If this ever becomes a mature and pervasive technology, the applications are limitless.. imagine a wi-fi brain control unit with an open-source API... Control anything with your brain!
I was awake in the '80s. I knew Pac Man. And that screen shot, sir, is no Pac Man.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Development of these devices is actually a fun little field for a lot of electrical & computer engineering students who decide they want to do something else.
A couple years ago I toured one of the research labs at Michigan where they were developing these electrodes and the algorithms they're using to interpret the impulses... At least half of the lab were ex-EE students who decided they wanted to do biomed for grad school.
The scary part was that it was these same EE students who were running around performing basic brain surgery on rats. The amazing part was that if you stuck the electrode anywhere in the correct general area it would "just work" without needing to worry about hitting exact nerves, etc.
Your lab's on line 1.
Best Slashdot Co
Here's a link to the actual company and its technology used. This technology could be extremely helpful for soldiers or people who lost their limbs in traumatic accidents.
Now all we have to do is get the Ms. Pac-Man playing chimp to play against the insects for absolute animal kingdom Pacman supremacy...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqvRjHaDX6M
-- OpenVerse Visual Chat: http://openverse.com
How about this idea - an electrode in your brain, wired to a computer whose output connects to the said muscles. "Artificial nerves", so to speak.
On the other hand, that'd make me fear hackers 1000 times more. This could be the perfect plot for a sci-fi horror movie.
You must be referring to PinealWeb, the browser that lets you surf the Internet directly from your third eye! Using patented GneoGnostic technology, PinealWeb is able to provide an immersive Web browsing experience by pumping data directly through your pineal gland.
Be sure to read more at the PinealWeb website.
Between this and the cortical pre-conscious response story earlier today, I look forward to getting my Wired Reflexes I cyber implant. Still waiting on the datajack, though.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
The 'virtual ghost' is not controlled directly by the bugs' brains any more than my computer is controlled by my brain. There are other physical interfaces present. This story was made up to be sensational and actually provides no news at all, other than some bored kid with a webcam and several tortured bugs.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
The force is with you Nagle
"Does this wine taste funny to you?" -- Socrates
when I install Pac-Man, I also have to install the crickets and the maze?
Cause you never know who is coming back as a Dragoon next!
"I have returned!"
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Computers controlled by bugs? My computer has been controlled by bugs for years now -- it's running Windows!
Step 4: Think "Damn, I should have thought about clicking the Preview button first".
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
A beowulf cluster of linux running grits eating insect overlords. Uh... *throws a chair at an old korean e-mail user* ....
2) ?????
3) Profit!!!
Fighting ignorance with ignorance.
...the shell is in the GHOST!
"The position of the animals in the maze is detected using colour-tracking via a camera, and linked to the ghosts in the game."
I dunno about you, but the PacMan I played when young never had ghosts start humping each other in the middle of the maze. They never laid eggs under each other's skin, either.
And there was never some announcer off to the side of the game inciting "Jim" to go wrestle with the ghosts
"This way, the real animals are directly controlling the virtual ghosts."
Well, we could be real animals while playing the game (visualize that, Halo-heads!).
Does this improve the game-play? Maybe, if you are Zorak and you have some time to kill...
aside from the fact that the insects have no concept that they are controlling anything (unless they secretly are our overlords after all), in as much as they arent isn't this just a telemetry system with a "game screen" representing the actions of what you are measuring?
Billy Mitchell scored the first perfect game to this 1980 Namco classic back in 1999
M an)
:)
:)
read more about him here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell_(Pac-
The best I was able to do was around 2+ million 'running patterns' which Mitchell didn't do during his recordbreaking game. On a related note, I achieved something similar on TAPPER, finding out the game starts all over again after completing 'board 0' after board 255. Back then the game code was small and RAM was at a premium so the level counters were usually restricted to 1 8-bit byte hence the maximum level value of 255
Anyway, back then most of the hit videogames put out by Bally / Midway were 'pattern driven'. The best one of the bunch is TRON which had some randomization involved but the 4 subgames themselves were still pattern driven. I remember long ago spending quite a bit to master BURGERTIME. When I did, the game became ridiculously easy by moving around in a predetermined manner to get all the bad guys to 'bunch up' and move as one -- like shooting fish in a barrel.
After all that, I eventually moved on to STREET FIGHTER II and play that insted -- not quite as pattern driven against the computer AI and worthwhile to play against a skilled player who was about as good as I was. I beat the AI numerous times but never got good enough to beat 'any and all commers' hands down. The game was just a way to kill time...
But I have to admit, PUZZLE FIGHTER was probably the best STREET FIGHTER game of them all. That game wasn't a total 'twitchfest' like all the others in the series...
This all just shows that the future as protrayed by such fiction as Ghost in the Shell, and at the risk of really dating myself, The Eigth Man is not so farfetched. I wonder though, why they would use the artificial limbs to type, and not have a more direct way to transform thoughts to text.
There are so many better things to do with tiny brains.
Say an electrode touches where the brain feels pleasure, another touches where it feels pain, Those can be used to teach the 'brain' basic calculations. Maybe the next Radeon will be based on a rat brain.
Stem cells can be injected into the brain to keep it going for much longer so it learns more.
Move over Xilinx.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
That gives a whole new meaning to the term 'Pinhead'.
-----
Sig Sauer
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....