Mind-Controlled Robot Avatars Inch Towards Reality

Zothecula writes "Researchers at the CNRS-AIST Joint Robotics Laboratory (a collaboration between France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology) are developing software that allows a person to drive a robot with their thoughts alone. The technology could one day give a paralyzed patient greater autonomy through a robotic agent or avatar."

Comments

Surrogates

[aristotle-dude]

This sounds like a rudimentary version of the robot avatars in the movie Surrogates.

Re:Surrogates

[fiannaFailMan]

This sounds like a rudimentary version of the robot avatars in the movie Surrogates.

...or in the novel Blue Remembered Earth.

Re:Surrogates

[LordLucless]

Or the anime Angelic Layer - in fact, in that one, the mind-controlled robots were created to fund research into medical technology, as suggested in the summary.

Re:Think about the damage malware could do.

[psithurism]

"the robot is simply performing a preset action"
So the story would more likely be: Out of control avatar retrieves soft-drinks for 17 not-thirsty people.

The avatar idea here is pretty cool, but not even the author seems to understand why they don't just cut to eye-tracking, instead of the whole: reading the patients mind to determine what they are looking at. It looks to me to be an easy way to over complicate an already difficult project.

I wonder how disabled you have to be to get one. I mean, what if I just really don't want to walk all the way over to the fridge, could I get one prescribed?

Evangelion...

[NouberNou]

Does it only work on 14 year olds with dead parents?

A couch potato's dream come true

[Grayhand]

They just need to be able to pop a beer top and open a bag of chips to be extremely useful.

Re:Mix this with quantum entanglement

[Lord_of_the_nerf]

It just so happens that turning right, walking forward and then picking up a can off a table is Zeta Reticulan for 'we offer ourselves as your slaves'.

Re:Think about the damage malware could do.

[Carnildo]

The avatar idea here is pretty cool, but not even the author seems to understand why they don't just cut to eye-tracking, instead of the whole: reading the patients mind to determine what they are looking at. It looks to me to be an easy way to over complicate an already difficult project.

Eye tracking doesn't actually work that well for anything other than large-scale movements. You may think you're staring intently at that can of beer, but actually your center of focus is jumping all over the place. With luck, brain tracking will work better.