by Socrates
Cathy Hutchinson has been unable to move her own arms or legs for 15 years. But using a pioneering brain-machine interface she can steer a robotic arm towards a bottle, pick it up, and drink her morning coffee. The interface utilizes the BrainGate implant system – a sensor chip implanted in Cathy’s brain, which ‘reads’ her thoughts, and a decoder, which turns her thoughts into instructions for the robotic arm. In this video you can watch Cathy control the arm and hear from the team behind the pioneering study. You can check out the original research paper here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v485/n7398/full/nature11076.html The same story on Reuters News: Groundbreaking new research is allowing quadriplegics to control objects with a robotic arm and the power of their thoughts. A study involving a brain-computer interface developed at Brown University in Rhode Island, shows that people who have [...]
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by Socrates
The human-computer user interface has been one of the slowest to evolve and typewriter-style of keyboard and mouse controls are still the norm. The interface, however, is not going to be limited forever by the above combo, no matter how prevalent it may be today. We have already witnessed the introduction and growing success of touch-screen and voice-control devices becoming widely available to the public. Ultimately, the future of human-computer interface is one of direct brain-computer communication – you think of something and the computer starts doing it. Voice control and eye-control, however, are likely the intermediary stages on the way to direct brain-computer interface. We have already seen the wide introduction and consequent adoption of the former and it is about time we also start seeing the latter. Recently, my favorite laptop company – Lenovo, partnered with Swedish eye-control [...]
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