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Monkey Pilots Gundam With Brain Meats

Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 12:38 pm by Jami

Spider Monkey

A 12-pound, 32-inch monkey named Idoya in North Carolina made a 200-pound, 5-foot tall humanoid robot walk on a treadmill in Japan with the power of her mind. Electrodes were implanted into Idoya’s brain meats to record 250 neurons that fired when she walked. A camera was also set up to get some visual motion tracking of her walking. The neuron data and motion capture were then translated into a format that the computer could read and then spit out to the robot on the other side of the world. This the first time a robot has been controlled by brain signals.

Although jamming electrodes into my brain meats sounds quite painful, the idea of controlling large mechanical thingies with my mind sounds pretty fucking awesome. If this goes to human trials, it would be interesting to see just how hard you have to think about these processes in order for the system to work. You could almost see a practical application for driving if drivers didn’t get distracted so easily. Still, this mechanical telekinesis could have a lot of practical applications for those who are immobile.

The NYTimes article has some video footage of Idoya and the robot. Monkey pilot FTW!

[Via New York Times]

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 12:38 pm and is filed under Crunchy Pants, The Future, Gundam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

4 Responses to “Monkey Pilots Gundam With Brain Meats”

  1. AvatarTaellosse
    Posted: Jan 15th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
    1

    Actually, it probably wouldn’t hurt much at all. There are no pain receptors in the brain, so it would only hurt as much as it took for them to slice through the scalp, and that’s remedied easily enough with local anesthetic. Brain surgery patients are often kept conscious during surgery, partly because of this, and partly to help ensure the surgeon doesn’t slice anything really important–they can probe an area without doing permanent harm, and then assess from patient responses if it would do anything awful.

  2. AvatarJami
    Posted: Jan 15th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
    2
    Author Comment

    Oooh, but the drilling! The drilling would still make me cringe. EEK!

  3. AvatarKevin Bahrt
    Posted: Jan 15th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
    3

    Actually they already have human testing on para/quadriplegics however they are only at the state of moving a cursor on a computer screen without drilling holes. With holes they are still researching humanoid limbs for later.

  4. AvatarB.D.
    Posted: Jan 16th, 2008 at 1:49 am
    4

    …y’all know that Zeon apparently succeeded in making monkey-operated Zakus, right? And these were NEWTYPE monkeys, too. (see Crossbone Gundam Skull Heart).

    How much longer until Psycommu weapons enter battle? How much longer until BUGS enter battle…?

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