Computer Control, by Bug and by Brain 76
electric_mongoose writes "NewScientistTech has a fascinating story about a paralysed man who can control a computer and robot arm using electrodes implanted in his brain. The electrodes measure neural signals generated when he concentrates on trying to move one of his paralysed limbs and software translates these imagined gestures into the movement of an on-screen cursor or a robotic arm. Other researchers have also revealed a way to dramatically boost the efficiency of similar brain implants in monkeys."
If you don't have a handy human brain to play with, 9x320 writes points to a report on LiveScience of Wim van Eck's graduation project: a computer game similar to Pac-Man controlled, not by conventional computer code, but by the brain of an insect. From the article:"Instead of computer code, I wanted to have animals controlling the ghosts. To enable this, I built a real maze for the animals to walk around in, with its proportions and layout matching the maze of the computer game. The position of the animals in the maze is detected using colour-tracking via a camera, and linked to the ghosts in the game. This way, the real animals are directly controlling the virtual ghosts."
Re:Old news? (Score:2, Informative)
As for bugs controlling stuff with their mind, here's a sciencenews [sciencenews.org] article from 2000 about a lamprey (not actually a bug I guess) steering a comput
Re:Genius! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Genius! (Score:3, Funny)
Soo.. (Score:2, Funny)
And I guess this is appropriate... in sovie..nah, thats too easy.
Re:Soo.. (Score:3, Funny)
Viola! Post successful. I for one welcome our computerized-brain-chip-implanted-super-karma-pos
Re:Soo.. (Score:1, Offtopic)
Not that anyone posting to Slashdot would ever use Step 4 anyway (including myself).
Re:Soo.. (Score:2)
I am going to click Submit for this worthless post, though.
Re:Soo.. (Score:5, Funny)
Check...
* Step 2: Think about the words you want to say
Ahh that's where I've been going wrong. I usually just type without thinking first. Thanks for the tip.
Step 4 (Score:2)
Re:Soo.. (Score:2)
They may have to add something to the lameness filter, too. Assuming that statistic about the average guy thinking about sex every seven seconds on average is accurate, there will otherwise be a lot of interesting if off-topic stray thought comment spam out there.
Eat PacMan? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Eat PacMan? (Score:2)
http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/retro/watch-a-chimp-
Re:Eat PacMan? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Eat PacMan? (Score:1)
I'm gonna go ahead and translate to English, and then posit an answer to the question I think you've asked.
- Do they make the critters chase PacMan? Or do they just let them wander around in the maze? If so, what motivation do they give the crickets to chase PacMan?
- I'm thinking he just lets the insects loose and bases the ghost movement on the rather random (unless we assume insects have a plan when placed inside a maze) insect movement/lack
Re:Eat PacMan? (Score:2)
Re:Eat PacMan? (Score:4, Informative)
The ghosts have never chased PacMan around the maze, even though it seems an awful lot like they are when you find yourself in their paths.
Ghost movement patterns are predetermined and unrelated to the player's actions, as anyone who's looked at the slipcover inside Buckner and Garcia's "Pac Man Fever" LP could tell you.
Re:Eat PacMan? (Score:1)
Re:Eat PacMan? - pattern driven hit game... (Score:2)
read more about him here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell_(Pac-M an) [wikipedia.org]
The best I was able to do was around 2+ million 'running patterns' which Mitchell didn't do during his recordbreaking game. On a related note, I achieved something similar on TAPPER, finding out the game starts all over again after completing 'board 0' after board 255. Back then the game code was small and RAM was at a premium so the level count
Re:Eat PacMan? (Score:2)
Re:Eat PacMan? (Score:2, Informative)
When the crickets should chase Pac-Man, I switch on the motors furthest away from his location in the maze, so the crickets will flee in his direction.
Brain sensor allows mind-control (Score:3)
Not quite... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not quite... (Score:5, Interesting)
# A "trivial" thought in this context would be one that does not correspond to a normal physical action by the body. (Such as articulating a second set of arms, or "typing" without a keyboard by thinking of making the letters appear on screen)
Re:Not quite... (Score:1)
I'll be so excited when all the 400lbs beasties that complain about their arms hurting can't blame it on that "new fangled keyboard device"
Re:Not quite... (Score:2)
Re:Not quite... (Score:1)
While this paticular system of controling an arm is read-only. There have been results in other are that arn't read-only.
I don't have a link, but I recall very clearly that they've started to make a lot of progress with hooking up a camera to a subjects head and placing electrodes on/in the visual cortex and then feeding images captured by the camera into the person brain, allowing blind people to see
Re:Not quite... (Score:1)
Not so new news.... (Score:4, Informative)
Be careful. (Score:4, Funny)
Today's paralytic is tomorrow's cyborg. Children, be careful of whom you make fun.
Disclaimer: I personally advocate restraint in fun-making for "goodness sake" and not for fear of future retaliation. But there are those who think it cute to make fun of people with disabilities. Hopefully, a cyborg will eventually teach them that such behavior is not acceptable.
Revenge of the Protoss (Score:2)
"I have returned!"
Re:Be careful. (Score:2)
Ender? (Score:4, Funny)
All over. Beat them. "I beat you, Mazer Rackham."
Mazer laughed, a loud laugh that filled the room. "Ender Wiggin, you never played me. You never played a game since I was your teacher."
Ender didn't get the joke. He had played a great many games, at a terrible cost to himself. He began to get angry.
Mazer reached out and touched his shoulder. Ender shrugged him off. Mazer then grew serious and said, "Ender Wiggin, for the last months you have been the commander of our fleets. There were no games. The battles were real. Your only enemy was the enemy. You won every battle. Ate every pellet. And finally today you fought them at their little box in the middle of the screen, and you destroyed them completely and even got all the little fruits, and they'll never come against us again. You did it. You."
Re:Ender? (Score:1)
Re:Ender? (Score:1)
Link to the real paper in Nature (Score:5, Informative)
This is not new news (Score:2, Informative)
We were working with a quadraplegic who had implants that also measured brainwave activity and crudely mapped them to mouse movements - one "thought" was for X-axis, and another was for Y-axis. I say "crude" because, IIRC, the cursor could only go one way, and when it got
Imagine... (Score:1, Redundant)
I can finally win. . . (Score:4, Funny)
Gotta go out to the garage and find that can of Raid. . .
van Eck? (Score:2, Informative)
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,289893,s id9_gci550525,00.html [techtarget.com]
"This term combines the name of Wim van Eck, who in 1985 authored an academic paper that described this form of electronic eavesdropping, with the term phreaking, the earlier practice of using special equipment to make phone calls without paying. Van Eck phreaking is identified in the U.S. gove
Re:van Eck? (Score:2)
This just in (Score:4, Funny)
Music (Score:2, Interesting)
Obligatory Slashdot nitpick (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Obligatory Slashdot nitpick (Score:2)
Fun field for disgrunteled EE & CS students (Score:2, Interesting)
A couple years ago I toured one of the research labs at Michigan where they were developing these electrodes and the algorithms they're using to interpret the impulses... At least half of the lab were ex-EE students who decided they wanted to do biomed for grad school.
The scary part was that it was these same EE students who were running around pe
Re:Fun field for disgrunteled EE & CS students (Score:2)
That would probably be because in that case, it is not the computer that is learning from the animal, but the animal learning to interact with the computer. I have a suspicion that the area of human-controlled manipulation will move forward in leaps and bounds when the people hooking these things up realise that brains are actually quite good
Paging Doc Ock... (Score:2)
Actual company link (Score:1)
Chimps vs Insects (Score:4, Funny)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqvRjHaDX6M [youtube.com]
Muscle rewiring? (Score:2)
On the other hand, that'd make me fear hackers 1000 times more. This could be the perfect plot for a sci-fi horror movie.
Wired Reflexes I (Score:3, Interesting)
Not directly controlled. (Score:3, Insightful)
The 'virtual ghost' is not controlled directly by the bugs' brains any more than my computer is controlled by my brain. There are other physical interfaces present. This story was made up to be sensational and actually provides no news at all, other than some bored kid with a webcam and several tortured bugs.
The distant voice of Obi-Wan (Score:1)
That means.. (Score:1)
I for one welcome... (Score:3, Funny)
My PacMan never did this... (Score:1)
I dunno about you, but the PacMan I played when young never had ghosts start humping each other in the middle of the maze. They never laid eggs under each other's skin, either.
And there was never some announcer off to the side of the game inciting "Jim" to go wrestle with the ghosts
"This way, the real animals are directly controlling the virtual ghosts."
Well, we could be real animal
insects controlling ghosts? (Score:1)
Brain implants and machine control (Score:1)
Re:Brain implants and machine control (Score:2)
Why stop at pacman? (Score:2)
Say an electrode touches where the brain feels pleasure, another touches where it feels pain, Those can be used to teach the 'brain' basic calculations. Maybe the next Radeon will be based on a rat brain.
Stem cells can be injected into the brain to keep it going for much longer so it learns more.
Move over Xilinx.