Prosthetic news... Robomonkey!

[andygates]

New Scientist has a piece with video of a monkey feeding itself using a robot arm wired up to its brain.  This is a first - and an important first for properly intent-driven prosthetics.  Electrodes in the monkeybrain's motor cortex send signals to a computer which translates into command for the robot arm.  It sounds obvious but so far, ain't been done before.  You can see how easy the little fellow finds it from the bored "mmm, nom nom nom" face he's pulling.

Comments

[flitljm.livejournal.com]

Not much of a life for a monkey, though.

Its hard to tell from the video whether there is any need for actual insertion of electrodes or whether the neuronal signals can be picked up externally (and the Nature doi isn't working yet). I imagine that the latter would be preferable if adapting to re-able people with no functioning arms of their own.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Agreed on both counts. Can't see how you'd do the work without nearly-human brains to play with though. My guess would be that the non-invasive version would use a huge scanner which currently isn't practical.