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Ants Used For Mind-Controlled Robotic Limbs
mr sanjeev writes "Australian researchers are reducing the divide between science fiction and science reality by bringing the development of mind-controlled robotic limbs a few steps closer. Even the most fertile science fiction imagination might not see a link between the behavior of ant colonies and the development of lifelike robotic limbs, but that is the straightforward mathematical reality of research underway at the University of Technology, Sydney. The technology mimics the myoelectric signals used by the central nervous system (CNS) to control muscle activity. Artificial intelligence researchers have long used the complex interactions between ants to construct a pattern recognition formula to identify bioelectric signals. PhD student Rami Khushaba said 'swarm-intelligence' allows scientists to understand the body's electrical signals and use the knowledge to create a robotic prosthetic device that can be operated by human thought."
found this article very interesting
Be honest, raise your hand if the first thing you thought of when seeing that title was:
+++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
the ants will soon be here. And I for one welcome our new insect overlords.
"You are only young once, but you can be immature forever." -www.animemusicvideos.org
I, for one, welcome our new cybernetic overlords!
Trollaxor: Hey, RMS, what the fuck is up? I'm glad I got the opportunity to perform this interview with you. [coughs]
RMS: Hello, Mr. Trollaxor. I'm glad I got the opportunity to speak to another individual, interested in Free Software, that will eventually reach millions with the message I wish to express in this interview.
Trollaxor: Yeah, whatever. Let's get this over with. Firstly, let's talk about the origins of GNU. We all know it's Not UNIX. But where, exactly, did it come from? What was your prime inspiration for such a fine, grand, practical idea?
RMS: I'm glad you asked that.
Trollaxor: I'm not.
RMS: Ah [laughs]. You have a unique sense of humor, comrade Trollaxor!
Trollaxor: I know. And don't call me comrade. Or your friend, ally, brother, homey... I don't even like you. Now answer the question.
RMS: Ah, [laughs] Yes. GNU. Well, after reading the works of Marx and Lenin, and having attended MIT and created several programs (GCC among them, of course) to which the source code was freely (as in speech, and beer) available, I began to see a certain communal effort begin to take shape among the software developers in the labs where I worked. However, the "administration" at MIT improperly thought that, since my works were created at MIT, they, and their source, belonged to MIT. This was in conflict with my embryonic philosphyâ"
Trollaxor: Hey, could you just cut your ideological bullshit and get to the part where you were taking a dump and farted out the GNU/Free Software concept as we know it today?
RMS: Ah, I don't think I know what you're referring to, Mr. Trollaxor. And I certainly don't remember any toilet episodes being involved with the creation of GNU or Free Software.
Trollaxor: Oh really? It's hard for me to imagine a toilet not having been involved in the creation of Free Software. No, I'm talking about how one day you were sitting in a stall at MIT's grand restroom facilities, peeped thru the glory hole bored in the stall wall to look for customers, and saw a man's ass tatooed with a bull or yak or something?
RMS: WHAT!?
Trollaxor: Okay, okay, okay. Let's move on. How about your musical talents? From graphics posted at your homepage, it looks like you're fairly proficient on the flute. How's you obtain that talent?
RMS: That's rather simple: just a lot of practice and determination. The instruments you've seen me playing on my website are plan-pipes, actually, and not flutes. I began taking lessons from my father while him and I were still talking. I can play the flute, however, and--
Trollaxor: Skin-flute.
RMS: Excuse me?
Trollaxor: You heard me. Skin-flute. You play the skin-flute. That's why you're so good on those porn-pipes or whatever the Hell you called them. You are a skin-flute virtuoso and can play them like nobody's business. "Master skin-flutist RMS." Skin-flute.
RMS: Ah, I think this interview's getting a little off-track from its focus of Free Software and the GNU philosphy.
Trollaxor: Of course it is. And why the fuck do you begin every sentence with "ah?" Anyway, I'll indulge you. New question. What's all this I hear about you dropping acid like there's not tomorrow?
RMS: Hey, look, I'm willing to spend my time discussing and even debating about the GNU concept and Free Software. I'm a very busy man--
Trollaxor: No you're not.
RMS: I'm a very busy man and I simply cannot tolerate spending my valuable time digressing onto useless topics, much less helping you slander my good nameâ"
Trollaxor: Shut up.
RMS: I believe we're talking at cross-purposes here and I wish to terminate this interview now.
Trollaxor: I believe your style is cross-dressing and I wish to inform you've been trolled. Do you know what a DGH is?
RMS: What? Excuse me? I said I wanted to stop this interview now!
Trollaxor: A "DGH" is a Dirty GNU Hippie. You're a DGH. You're a pinko Commy too. Learn to bath, shave, and wipe your ass properly, and we in the Ministry of Love will welcome you with open arms. Good day, Corporal Crapola of the GNU Commando!
Yet another research project that needs fine ants.
Now you can have a robotic limb on top of every anthill. The ants will no longer have to carry measly pieces of grains or berries back to the hill - they can work in concert and use the mighty grasp of a robotic arm. How will you compete in this brave new world, mankind?
The problem is, they spend so much time trying to get it to interface with the nerves in the same way as the original limb. Ideally, sure, we'd like it to go that way. But that's a long way off.
If they could just get it to read some signals, any signals, the methods for controlling it could be learned by the recipient.
Humans are born with the capability of mastering our limbs; fine motor coordination isn't something we're born with, it's learned. Why try to write software to do that?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
They're already here. They ruined my picnic this past summer.
Hope they use Army ants or Fire ants. Robots that destroy everyting in their path or squirt acid cocktails would freaking rock. THe first 2 prosthetics available sould be Mandibles and stingers. then they can branch out into other insectoid robot prosthetics like Pinchers, Scorpion tails and wings. I forsee a bold new future.
Question is who will be the first to reverse engineer their prosthetic arm to control ants instead?
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Mind Control = Ant's in the pants ?
This experiment was performed in the High Energy Magic building, wasn't it? /Anthill Inside
Ubiquitously - A Ubiquity Developer Community
Our Ant Like Robotic overlords
http://inttech.blogspot.com/2008/11/sci-fi-and-real-science-collide.html
Yes real science and Sci-Fi are colliding. This research can have amazing benefits for people suffering from a wide range of conditions and limb loss.
Think Deeply.
damn you beat me to the punch....
... if your foot falls asleep, it feels like there's ants running around on it?
I'm looking forward to the day when I can crush someone's throat with the power of my evil bionic hand. Until then, I'll just have to choke them by roasting habanero peppers in a dry skillet.
I wonder how long it'll take for artificial limbs to become perfect substitutes, the kind of thing you can even forget you have. My glasses are so much a part of me and so light, I could easily forget I'm wearing them aside from the bit about things not being blurry. I wonder what it would take for an artificial hand to be good enough to play piano, type on a keyboard, providing perfect sensory feedback and accuracy.
What's the hard part about wiring the limbs up to the nerves? I remember reading about a special adhesive developed that could be sticky on one end for nerves, a proper digital interface on the other side, and the signals would be transmitted properly.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I was told there would be sugar syrup!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paratrechina_species_near_pubens
As long as they aren't these then they probably will be ok.
The entire reason this article was posted to slashdot was so that people could make this reference, and feel damn clever about it.
Does it stop working if they remove the teddy bear?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
As a smart consumer, I'll be sure to look for the artificial limb carrying the "Anthill Inside" sticker.
"Even the most fertile science fiction imagination might not see a link between the behavior of ant colonies and the development of lifelike robotic limbs" The author clearly hasn't read Jeff Noon's excellent book (although it's termites in it's case)
That for me means somewhere in the 250-255 milliseconds range, which is still a quarter of a second. That doesn't seem particularly fast to me. Not fast enough for driving or catching falling objects, for example. True cyborg implants are still some way away in the future.
Just had a thought: It must be difficult to program the artificial limb to respond to the correct signals. If you told me to flex a specific muscle, I'd actually have a pretty hard time isolating it and doing it. If I no longer had the muscle in question, it would be even harder. It makes me wonder, is that really how the nervous system works? Maybe we don't have a 'wire' from the brain to each muscle, we instead have a set of motions that we perform, each involving several muscles. Our brains can decide between those sets, and can use combinations of the sets to 'tweak' the movement. If the brain finds that a motion is impossible given the current set, it can work on evolving a new set, but that process would only be possible with a fairly involved training process, a reroute of the neural pathways.
What if you told people to go through a set of motions that involved other muscles as well, and used the intersections of the signals and muscles involved to isolate the correct signals? Maybe the story in the past couple days about replicating the Mona Lisa using polygons is a good analogy. The goal is to find a minimal set of signals (polygons) that form a basis for complete functionality.
-t.
If you had an ant-limb you might have been able to punch quicker.
And it still gets modded redundant, even though it's the third post in here. Tough crowd.
"You are only young once, but you can be immature forever." -www.animemusicvideos.org
My Aunt is Mormon, they have been using Mind control for years.
Who will lead the fight in liberating the ant slaves from their amputee masters?
You could give yourself a hand with a vagina like hole in the palm, for example. You could learn how to open it with thought or manipulate it in other ways and it'd also be useful for holding random things like your phone rather than putting it down, picking something else up, moving that, putting it down and then picking your original item up.
These types of mind-controlled prosthesis are just the beginning. When we know how to link mechanical devices to our brains we can start using alternative limbterfaces (just coined that one!) and training ourselves to use those instead of our familiar arms and legs.
Nick
Our new robotic ant overlords ;)
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Welcome our new thought-controlled battle mech piloting ant overlords. Why would they stop at human size, when they could become 60 feet tall and kick over OUR homes?!
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
That ant farm I have in the basement MIGHT want to go onto Craigslist real soon now too!
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Actually, I wasn't, until you said it. Now I can't get the image out of my brain. Damn you!