As the old saying goes: Either monkeys or robots are going to take over the earth (either Planet of the Apes style or a Terminator situation). Now they are working together, our assured destruction is not far off. Sure they say there are great implications for allowing paraplegics to operate mechanical arms, enabling them to be more self sufficient, I just say be careful...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/science/29brain.html?hp
Update (5/30/08): Thanks to reader Elliot for sharing the link. I want to quote a piece from the Times article to clarify that this is actually a really cool advancement because the monkeys began to use the appendage as their own (not simply control a mouse cursor or mechanical arm, as they and humans had done before). The monkeys quickly adapted the new arm as their own, and making adjustments and fine tuning motions as they would their own arm. Really quite exciting for this field. Excerpt:
In previous studies, researchers showed that humans who had been paralyzed for years could learn to control a cursor on a computer screen with their brain waves and that nonhuman primates could use their thoughts to move a mechanical arm, a robotic hand or a robot on a treadmill.
The new experiment goes a step further. In it, the monkeys’ brains seem to have adopted the mechanical appendage as their own, refining its movement as it interacted with real objects in real time.
3 comments:
I, for one, welcome our new simian android overlords.
me too, but only as long as they wear fezes and wail on guitars like in that picture
It's also been done in quadriplegics.
http://www.cyberkineticsinc.com/content/index.jsp
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