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Computer Control, by Bug and by Brain

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the different-domains dept.

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."

28 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Soo.. by RagingFuryBlack · · Score: 2, Funny
    by this time next year every true slashdotter will have the implant in their brain and be using it full-time to post on slashdot. Gone will be RSS feeds and instead all the Slashvertisememts and FUD will be automatically implainted into your brain.


    And I guess this is appropriate... in sovie..nah, thats too easy.

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    Warning: Corny karma killing post above.
    1. Re:Soo.. by ManoSinistra · · Score: 3, Funny
      by this time next year every true slashdotter will have the implant in their brain and be using it full-time to post on slashdot
      Step 1: Just sit back, and *think* about commenting Step 2: Think about the words you want to say Step 3: Think about clicking the submit button
      Viola! Post successful. I for one welcome our computerized-brain-chip-implanted-super-karma-post ing overlords.
    2. Re:Soo.. by MarkByers · · Score: 4, Funny

      * Step 1: Just sit back, and *think* about commenting

      Check...

      * Step 2: Think about the words you want to say

      Ahh that's where I've been going wrong. I usually just type without thinking first. Thanks for the tip.

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      I'll probably be modded down for this...
  2. Eat PacMan? by Alexandra+Erenhart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Eat PacMan? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      A better link to this project can be found at http://mediatechnology.liacs.nl/htmlIndex.html. Go to 'projects', then 'all projects by year', then 'Animal Controlled Computer Games'. Looks like this project was done back in 2004 - not exactly recent news.

    2. Re:Eat PacMan? by poot_rootbeer · · Score: 3, Informative

      How do they do to make critters chase PacMan? Or they just don't and wonder around in the maze?

      The ghosts have never chased PacMan around the maze, even though it seems an awful lot like they are when you find yourself in their paths.

      Ghost movement patterns are predetermined and unrelated to the player's actions, as anyone who's looked at the slipcover inside Buckner and Garcia's "Pac Man Fever" LP could tell you.

    3. Re:Eat PacMan? by Jamil+Karim · · Score: 2, Informative

      According to the project page he did it in this way:

      When the crickets should chase Pac-Man, I switch on the motors furthest away from his location in the maze, so the crickets will flee in his direction.

  3. Brain sensor allows mind-control by mobby_6kl · · Score: 2

    BBC submitted it with a better headline.

  4. Not quite... by DownWithTheMan · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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

    1. Re:Not quite... by smbarbour · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Judging by the way this (and related) technology works, wouldn't it be possible to augment a completely healthy adult with a computer? Obviously, this is something that could only be tested on humans. While other animals may be capable of thought, we cannot directly communicate with them enough to instruct them to make a "trivial"# thought repeatedly for a computer to "learn" the signal. We, however, do possess the ability to make a "trivial" thought repeatedly. Perhaps something like this would one day lead to computer-assisted telepathy. So far though, the biggest hurdle is that, at present, the computer interface is mainly read-only.

      # A "trivial" thought in this context would be one that does not correspond to a normal physical action by the body. (Such as articulating a second set of arms, or "typing" without a keyboard by thinking of making the letters appear on screen)

  5. Re:Genius! by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 4, Funny
    (I assume not much happens when the player catches a fleeing ghost/cricket.
    Actually, Wim van Eck would then reach into the maze and eat the cricket in question. That cost him a few points off his graduation project, but on the bright side they were delicious.
    --
    Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
  6. Not so new news.... by Cherita+Chen · · Score: 3, Informative

    We have already seen this in Professor Kevin Warwick

    --
    I'm not fat, just big boned...
  7. Be careful. by rowama · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  8. Ender? by schmidt349 · · Score: 3, Funny

    "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."

  9. Link to the real paper in Nature by inverselimit · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  10. This is not new news by ckhorne · · Score: 2, Informative

    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...

  11. I can finally win. . . by treeves · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.
  12. van Eck? by eric434 · · Score: 2, Informative

    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?

    http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,289893,s id9_gci550525,00.html

    "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."

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    This .sig temporary until a better .sig can be constructed.
  13. Re:Genius! by whitehatlurker · · Score: 2, Funny

    Actually, that sort of population selection should give rise to better cricket players (er, if you see what I mean).

    --
    .. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
  14. This just in by linvir · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

  15. Music by HoboCop · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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!

  16. Obligatory Slashdot nitpick by Jeremi · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.
  17. Re:Old news? by EERac · · Score: 2, Informative

    The story about a paralyzed man (Matthew Nagle) controling a computer with his brain is definitely not new. There was a very good story in Wired in March 2005, and much more recently, a piece on NPR's The Infinite Mind. According to the piece, Matthew has since had the implant removed, since the trial has ended. I believe at least one other trial is in progress.

    As for bugs controlling stuff with their mind, here's a sciencenews article from 2000 about a lamprey (not actually a bug I guess) steering a computer-controlled robot for no good reason. I saw the original paper in Artificial Life at some point, and it was easily the most ridiculous scientific journal article I've ever seen.

  18. Fun field for disgrunteled EE & CS students by uarch · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  19. Chimps vs Insects by Sketch · · Score: 3, Funny

    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

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    -- OpenVerse Visual Chat: http://openverse.com
  20. Wired Reflexes I by Relic+of+the+Future · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
  21. Not directly controlled. by Aladrin · · Score: 2, Insightful
    The position of the animals in the maze is detected using colour-tracking via a camera, and linked to the ghosts in the game.

    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
  22. I for one welcome... by mindstorms · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.