Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
For nearly completely paralyzed people, this promises to be a fan-
tastic boon. A person could control a computer or robot to do
anything in real time, as fast as they can think. [5]
The Duke University team has showed that humans produce brain sig-
nals like those of the monkeys in their experiments. John Chapin, a pro-
fessor of physiology and pharmacology at the State University of New
York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, describes how:
Monkeys not only use their brain activity to control a robot, but
also they improve their performance with time. The stunning thing
is that we can now see how this occurs, how neurons change their
tuning as the monkey does different tasks. [5]
Nicolelis' experiments involved implanting tiny probes called microwires
into several brain regions of two rhesus monkeys. At first, each monkey
learned to move a joystick that controlled a cursor on a computer screen.
When a ball appeared, the monkey was rewarded with a drink of fruit
juice if it managed to move the cursor to a target. Nicolelis' team col-
lected scans showing the electrical patterns from a monkey's brain as it
performed the tasks. After a monkey became skilled at getting the cursor
to the target the scientists disconnected the joystick. At first, the monkey
would wiggle the joystick and stare at the screen as it did before, and
even though the joystick was disconnected the monkey's brain scans, as
it reached for the joystick and tried to use it to grasp an object on the
screen, were being sent to a computer which translated those signals into
movements on screen. Nicolelis described what happened next:
There was an incredible moment when the monkey realized that
it could guide the cursor and grasp an object on the screen just by
thinking it. The arm dropped. Muscles no longer contracted. [5]
The implications of this research for affective wearables are absolutely
staggering, and technology similar to that used for affective wearables is
already being developed to carry out similar measurements on the elec-
trical signals of the human brain. Developing the technology to work on
the electrical signals associated with all of our thought processes, and not
just those associated with arm movement, will mean that eventually an
affective wearable will be able to read our thoughts as well as to detect
and measure our emotions. If such a wearable, or another device in close
proximity to the body, then transmits our thoughts and emotions to a
robot to act on them, we will find our robots doing our bidding even
