Honda Robot Controlled By Brain Waves 137
Dotnaught writes "Honda researchers to have developed a way to control robots using human brain waves. Using brain signals read from a person in a magnetic resonance imaging scanner, a robotic hand mirrored the movement of the human controller, spreading its fingers and making a 'V' sign."
It's good to see they're making progress (Score:2, Interesting)
I've always thought... (Score:4, Interesting)
universality? (Score:5, Interesting)
While I'm sure that bloodflow signatures for physical movements are similar between individuals, is there too much variability to prevent false recognition of a 'signal'?
Any neurobiologists out there care to help out?
like the monkey stuff from a few years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's an article from New Scientist:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4262 [newscientist.com]
Re:universality? (Score:5, Interesting)
At this point, it is surprising that they can even do it for an individual (discerning among these three quite similar hand movements). I am kind of skeptical myself. There is a lot of variability in fMRI signal even within an individual. I would guess the system is trained on a specific individual.
Between individuals you have additional sources of variability; for example, the foldings of the cortex are quite different from person to person. I personally have a very unusual precentral gyrus on the left side. Activity maps are typically aligned to anatomical maps so finding correspondences between individuals has to deal with the challenges of anatomical variability.
For gross things, it can be quite obvious what the person is doing. I can tell by looking at the activations in your brain if you are looking at something versus hearing something. But looking at a duck versus looking at a cow? Much harder. Making a V-sign versus making a fist? I've never seen a paper where someone reported being able to do this. It is theoretically possible, but difficult with a blurry MRI signal that aggregates over populations of neurons. You can certainly do it if you implant electrodes into the brain. Recordings from monkey premotor cortex, for example, find neurons that fire when specific movements are made.
New meaning to telecommuting (Score:3, Interesting)
Meanwhile, video from teh robot's 'eye' are transmitted to a 3d viewer in front of your face.
Forget star-rek transporters. Thisi s the next best (and plausible) thing.
Very bad implications for crime and terrorism, though.
My kids couldn't ever use it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Kidding aside, I understand that during adolescence the brain completely reorganizes higher functions -- often shifting the center or processing for many of them to entirely different places.
Exactly how would this ASIMO++ handle that?
Oh, and what about blondes?
Re:universality? (Score:2, Interesting)
This is also demonstrated to learning to use a joystick or gamepad. Anyone new to a different kind of interface needs to make certain adjustments and brain motor connections to accommodate a new way of manipulating things. I am quite adept at FSP games on the PC, for example, but when I started playing Halo on X-Box, I was running around like a drunken sailor. Overtime, however, my hand and mind became quite accustomed to manipulating the movements on the screen. So would it be with your mind controlling the robot.