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fMRI Lets Israeli Student Control Robot In France With His Mind
MrSeb writes "An Israeli student has become the first person to meld his mind and movements with a robot surrogate, or avatar. Situated inside an fMRI scanner in Israel, Tirosh Shapira has controlled a humanoid robot some 2000 kilometers (1250 miles) away, at the Béziers Technology Institute in France, using just his mind. The system must be trained so that a particular "thought" (fMRI blood flow pattern) equates to a certain command. In this case, when Shapira thinks about moving forward or backward, the robot moves forward or backward; when Shapira thinks about moving one of his hands, the robot surrogate turns in that direction. To complete the loop, the robot has a camera on its head, with the image being displayed in front of Shapira. Speaking to New Scientist, it sounds like Shapira really became one with the robot: 'It was mind-blowing. I really felt like I was there, moving around,' he says. 'At one point the connection failed. One of the researchers picked the robot up to see what the problem was and I was like, "Oi, put me down!"'"
Thought that was always just the Aussies. Huh.
The story is interesting, although somehow not that exciting as this kind of advancement is...necessary and expected.
When we can actually upload data to our brains and have thoughts translated to a phonetic language...then we will have something that will move mankind forward generations.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Israel has been mind-controlling America for a long time.
But now with computers!
mind melding with your partners sex toy
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
I'd like to know where Slashdot was when we did this in 2010.
is to combine this technology with remotely piloted drones, spy-copters, and eventually combat robots. Then I can imagine a military formation formed up to receive orders, being told they were going to war, and then told to go to it - and no one needs to move :P
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
LOL @ "first person to meld his mind and movements with a robot surrogate".
But i guess since the media is the israelis bitch, they can cntrl-alt-dlt it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain%E2%80%93computer_interface
Now we just need to work on the robot bodies.
Most of the comments so far seem to confuse EEG-based interfaces with fMRI-based ones, or local with telerobotics, but no great surprise there. The politics is sad, but again only to be expected.
We still can't do true mind-control of robots (there's no way to read minds yet, we can only say "pattern X equals action Y", which is not the same thing) but this is an interesting development to say the least. Think in terms of medicine. Robotic interfaces in surgery are typically data gloves or joystick, plus goggles, but muscles have poor granularity of control, data gloves and joysticks reduce this further, and goggles are incredibly low-res. If they get to the point where surgeons are limited only by the precision of their mind, you're looking at a major revolution.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Ask any good backhoe operator about how he operates the machine and you'll find he doesn't think about the mechanics of his arms and feet interacting with the control levers. His brain abstracts all that and treats the hoe as an extension of his body. Once you've been trained how to move the controls, you stop thinking about it. You just dig.
A similar feeling could be generated simply by video goggles and a joystick. In fact when I fly my airplane using a video downlink, it feels like "I'm there." Seeing yourself on the ground is a bit weird! I can look down at something, turn the plane to look at something all without really thinking about what my hands need to do, since they've been trained and my brain just does that automatically in response to what I want to do. This is true of normal RC airplane flying as well. People often ask me how I can remember to move my fingers in the opposite direction as the plane is flying towards me but the truth is I don't think about it at all very much. I just move the airplane where I want it to be.
The exciting goal of thought control, though, is obviously to enable people who don't have the use of limbs or fingers to control and interact with robotics, such as an artificial limb, as if it is part of the body. And as the test subject can attest, that's pretty much what happens with training. Now if they can just get the sensor equipment to weight less than a few tons and not draw metal objects towards it...
Nearly there till hot blue alien sex.....come on you where all thinking it....
If you are in Israel with a physical (but virtual) presence device in France, do you need a passport?
Shouldn't that be brain instead of mind?
Oy! Mind meld, my recto-tectal tract! Functional assertions not withstanding, MRI derived blood flow and oxygen usage patterns are not algorithmically equatable with thought...
Existing MRI scanners are overwhelming auditory assault systems, and I can (in my sf-enthusiast imagination) conceive of no better way of limiting military drone pilot endurance than to link one to a state of the art MRI scanner. As if current Raptor trailer sessions probably don't produce enough "Hellfire" stress, in theory...
Of course, since the pop-sci overlay came first from a reputable sci pub, it must be gospel... Um torah...
Put me DOWN? Heh. Heh. How slow on the uptake do you have to be over 2K Km? The Israeli grad student and his institution clearly won this week's sci-hype contest.
"An Israeli student has become the first person to meld his mind and movements with a robot surrogate, or avatar.
LaForge will be happy to hear this.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Now you have real school kids controlling real robots in real life with their real minds.
For a moment I thought this was going to be an article about how doctors can now get a clear picture of your brain by analyzing your Facebook profile, reducing the need for a traditional MRI, but somehow costing more.
I'm much less impressed by the 2k distance than the ability to control a device from the mind. The robot could be close to the student or - even better - on him [iron-man like], the achievement would be just as great.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Have gnu, will travel.
. . . how about a robot controlling a human with its mind . . . ? Now that would be definitely more interesting, and would foster more vivacious cocktail party talk.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Wow you are an idiot. Have you ever been to Israel? Do you even know who the Palestinians are or where that name even comes from? I could rant on I am sure for many paragraphs uselessly, so I'll try to keep it relatively short...until you know our history, come to our country, see the reality on the ground, and educate yourself regarding the problems, please refrain from making misinformed ridiculous comments.
I think you are confused who the occupiers are. You try living somewhere where you are surrounded by people who worship death more than life, fire missiles at you daily in violation of every agreement, and who are caught daily with bombs and weapons at checkpoints. But if you would like to sit in some restaurants in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem every day after you remove the walls and checkpoints, be my guest and see what happens to you or one of your friends or family. You try living in a place where the world is against despite what they've done to your people, what promises were broken, what land was stolen (do you even realize not just historically, but according to international treaties how large Israel "should" be?).
It's sad people rely on propaganda and are compelled to constantly moan about a place they have never been. Perhaps it is some addiction to supporting the underdog, but sad when you can't even realize who is the real underdog. My country produces more technology and brain power than almost anywhere in the world, and we try to live peacefully. We had to work hard to resurrect our country that was destroyed and ravaged by war many times, only to have foreigners and squatters tell us what is what. Even my Arab neighbors who actually live in Israel realize this...
Please find something else to troll the internet about.
Was he allowed to shoot someone or blow something up?
Because that would be AWESOME.
No need. We already have TV news for that.
I don't think an fMRI interface is going to be very useful for controlling robots, because of the issue of temporal resolution. I think you can only acquire an fMRI image once every couple of seconds (at most). The above poster referred to the "granularity" issue with data gloves and joysticks, but it's a thousandfold worse with fMRI and probably always will be.
A better choice might be magnetoencephalography (MEG). Nearly instantaneous "image" acquisition, and as a side benefit, there are no health risks to the user (fMRI bombards you with intense magnetic fields and no one really knows if that's safe).
Surrogates covered the side-effects of such a development.
"The hallmark of humanity is the ability to move beyond sensory inputs" - Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
That's antisemetic! There's no such thing as the Israel Lobby.
Unless you think that the Israel Lobby is a good thing. In which case they're doing a great job!