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."
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.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
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.
Viola! Post successful. I for one welcome our computerized-brain-chip-implanted-super-karma-pos
"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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
* 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.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
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
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.