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 Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 4:19 pm
A lot of you have probably seen/heard about this before, but for those who havn't, a scientific experiment has proven that it IS in fact possible to control robotic limbs using nothing but thought. Vid here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-cpcoIJbOUIf they can get a monkey to control a robot arm with it's mind, perhaps it won't be long before amputees are able to control prosthetic robot-limbs as if they were their own flesh-and-blood. From there, it's only a matter of time before government super-soldiers are running around hurling cars at us with hydraulic muscles and the like. What do you guys think?
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Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 6:30 pm
Veeediot A lot of you have probably seen/heard about this before, but for those who havn't, a scientific experiment has proven that it IS in fact possible to control robotic limbs using nothing but thought. Vid here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-cpcoIJbOUIf they can get a monkey to control a robot arm with it's mind, perhaps it won't be long before amputees are able to control prosthetic robot-limbs as if they were their own flesh-and-blood. From there, it's only a matter of time before government super-soldiers are running around hurling cars at us with hydraulic muscles and the like. What do you guys think? I think it's a matter of time, but a matter of great time... things will have to go through Animal rights and the such and it will take forever to get the people with the knowledge to make such a thing work in a country that will allow the technology to be developed and tested... I think america will be last on thew list of cybernetic innovations...
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Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2007 2:20 pm
I agree that it's going to take quite a bit of time yet to develop the technology to a point where it could be made available commercially, but I don't really think animals rights is going to be much of an issue, and I'm pretty sure the US is still on top as far development of this kind of technology is concerned.
The guy in the clip sounded like he had a bit of accent, but according to BBC News, the experiments were actually conducted in North Carolina. There are much worse things being done to monkeys at the moment than putting chips in their brains to monitor their brainwaves. I don't think animal rights is going to be much of an issue in this case.
The biggest problems are probably going to be in both decoding the signals in our brains to figure out what controls what (which is undoubtedly going to be, at the very least, a two or three decade process), and finding human subjects willing to have chips installed in their heads, and their thoughts and brain activity decoded in order to make this technology available for human use.
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Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2007 3:09 am
Controlling artificial limbs by thought, especially on a consumer level vs. inside a lab, is probably a long way in the future, but controlling artificial limbs at all is probably not far away: http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2007/07/xfingerI see no reason why fictional artificial limbs have to be jacked into the central nervous system, anymore. A well crafted artificial superarm made in this style could respond well, be removable and replacable without too much trouble, and not having it be surgically fused with the human body means that if the arm is much stronger than flesh, and the owner uses the arm much too hard, instead of ripping off grotesquely it would just pop off. This all seems to fit the convenient/disposable aspects of technology, and life, in good cyberpunk.
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Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 3:35 pm
Ophite Controlling artificial limbs by thought, especially on a consumer level vs. inside a lab, is probably a long way in the future, but controlling artificial limbs at all is probably not far away: http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2007/07/xfingerI see no reason why fictional artificial limbs have to be jacked into the central nervous system, anymore. A well crafted artificial superarm made in this style could respond well, be removable and replacable without too much trouble, and not having it be surgically fused with the human body means that if the arm is much stronger than flesh, and the owner uses the arm much too hard, instead of ripping off grotesquely it would just pop off. This all seems to fit the convenient/disposable aspects of technology, and life, in good cyberpunk. Prosthetic limbs like that have been around for decades. They work well for fingers, because fingers are only controlled by a few tendons anyways. and can really only make two or three separate movements. Unfortunately, trying to control an entire prosthetic limb using, say, your back muscles (which is how many prosthetic limbs work) is far more difficult. Technology can help smooth out some of these motions with full prosthetic limbs by predicting what the user wants it to do (as I've seen done with prosthetic legs for walking movements) however, it's still very difficult to obtain the kind of control over a prosthetic limb that one would have with a limb controlled entirely by their own brainwaves. As for the whole disposable aspect, it should be noted that the monkey in that video wasn't actually attached to the limb it was moving. I don't think future real-world prosthetics would ever try to permanently attach a robotic limb to someone, and I don't see why fictional characters can't have detachable prosthetics that connect to their nervous system through wires/infrared/the-socket-the-limb-plugs-into etc. instead of having outdated and difficult to manage limbs like your little mechanical finger there.
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