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Wheelchair Controlled by Thought
macduffman writes "New Scientist reports on another development in interfacing with the central nervous system. The system 'eavesdrops' on signals sent from the brain to the larynx, so even people who lack the muscular control to vocalize a command can operate it. The potential applications of this technology are as varied as human imagination, among them: allowing a person who has lost speech capability to vocalize again." From the article:"The wheelchair could help people with spinal injuries, or neurological problems like cerebral palsy or motor neurone disease, operate computers and other equipment despite serious problems with muscle control. The system will work providing a person can still control their larynx, or 'voice box,' which may be the case even if the lack the muscle coordination necessary to produce coherent speech."
...but I'm more down to play a real next-gen gaming system ;)
I'll be in the cyberspace lobby.
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
If it's eavesdropping on the signals sent to your larynx, does that mean that you can't talk and drive at the same time?
Does it mean that saying "I left my keys at home" while driving on the sidewalk is going to send you hurtling into traffic?
You are awash in a sea of fiercely stated opinions. Obvious exits are: 'File->Quit', 'Reply', and 'Page Down'.
Surely the mouth and tongue are also required for speech. How much information can you convey using just your larynx?
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Steven Hawking is getting for xmas...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
That's the 1966 version. Obsolete. Get the 1982 upgrade.
("This is very important, Mister Gant. You must think in Russian -- you can't think in English and transpose it...")
The tech described in the article is surprisingly like the movie, right down to Clint Eastwood's subvocalizing the commands in his head after attempting (and failing) to fire the rearward missile in English, and only succeeding when he subvocalized the command while thinking in Russian.
http://www.lil-abner.com/
Al Capp was always sending up the captains of industry. He dreamed up the Shmoos who could solve all the problems of humanity. Naturally, the captains of industry spent a lot of time making sure the Shmoos didn't proliferate.
In one of the story lines an inventor came up with a car that needed no fuel, it was powered by the heartbeat of its driver. The captains of industry lured him up to the 100th floor of a building to demonstrate his (small) vehicle. As he was driving it down the hall they arranged for a beautiful woman to appear. His heartbeat raced and the car accelerated uncontrollably through the window at the end of the hall. Problem solved.
In light of the above, I dread the advent of wheelchairs controlled by their users' thoughts.
You have to think in Russian!
Sig cannot be found.
For another cool demo of the Audeo and how it was developed, you can watch a 5-minute video here:
http://www.ni.com/niweek/keynote_videos.htm
It's under "Tuesday" -- the last topic titled "Algorithm Engineering, Michael Callahan, Thomas Coleman"
Enjoy!
I always wonder whether embedding a glucose powered computer of some description into a new-born baby's brain would give them super math ability.. if you can fit a wireless connection in there too, that'd be nice.
I guess there's no ethical way to do it though.
How we know is more important than what we know.
He wants his chair back, and no - you can't ask the Talosians for another look at the Vina reconstruction.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Now if they would build that automatic spring puncher thing and the rotor blades like they had for Hawkings in the Simpsons...
The Nintendo Wiilchair?
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
For a short time in college I was on a research team looking into this kind of stuff. (Way back in '93, this was) The electrical impulses that are meant for your vocal chords, but are suppressed because you don't want to (or can't) speak are called "covert oral behavior." Anyway, even back then, we were working on training up neural networks to translate the signals into words/phonemes. I'm sure the technology has come a long way since then.
Right around 9/11 and the whole Gitmo thing I started thinking, "I'll bet covert oral behavior detection is being used to interrogate prisoners." The thing is, the signals "leak" down your nerves when you only think words, but don't say them. The trick is being able to interpret them and translate them to words. Not easy by any stretch, but once successful it would be the closest thing to ESP around.
The deal with this device is that it is intercepting the nerves that go to the larynx (from what I can tell from the article). I don't think that's much more than one channel.
Consider what your feet and hands do with driving. It's generally easier to control something with a bunch of different channels available to yourself, and you get more bandwidth. Kind of like hunting and pecking versus touch typing. Or playing an FPS with just the keyboard compared to mouse + keyboard. The brain will use as many channels as it can for control. May take longer to learn but the end result is more complete control, with less fatigue.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Man, if I end up on such a wheelchair, I sure hope my larynx is fucked up too. Because otherwise it sounds like an orangutan on a wheelchair. "Uh uh uuuuh uh uh uuuuh uuuuh uuuuh!" Throw in some chest thumping and people might try to appease me with bananas.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.