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."

Comments

Eat PacMan?

[Alexandra Erenhart]

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.

Re:Genius!

[Rob T Firefly]

(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.

Be careful.

[rowama]

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.

Link to the real paper in Nature

[inverselimit]

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 can finally win. . .

[treeves]

at Pac-Man.
Gotta go out to the garage and find that can of Raid. . .

Re:Not quite...

[smbarbour]

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)

Re:Soo..

[MarkByers]

* 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.