ethics
02-18-2005, 01:01 PM
My brother was born without a hand. Back in the old days, Soviet Union didn't have anything close to robotics for the hand, the US --at the time-- was just beginning to test a few models but my brother never qualified.
The recent news gives me hope for the future and current folks who were unfortunate enough to be born (or lose a limb) with this anomaly. I was aware of otherwise primitive systems that had been interfaced with the human nervous system, but a freaking thought-controlled robot arm? Apparently researchers at Pittsburgh U were able to create a full shoulder-elbow-gripper type arm that can be jacked into a system of neural probes—the machine filters out all but the most important arm-movement neural signaling, and uses that to approximate mechanical motion with what they call a “population vector”.
So basically a monkey with its limbs restrained was able to pick up, hold food, and feed itself when its brain started firing arm movement commands.<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4275245.stm"> This is some seriously unbelievable freaky awesome advanced stuff</a>, man and I am loving it!!!
The recent news gives me hope for the future and current folks who were unfortunate enough to be born (or lose a limb) with this anomaly. I was aware of otherwise primitive systems that had been interfaced with the human nervous system, but a freaking thought-controlled robot arm? Apparently researchers at Pittsburgh U were able to create a full shoulder-elbow-gripper type arm that can be jacked into a system of neural probes—the machine filters out all but the most important arm-movement neural signaling, and uses that to approximate mechanical motion with what they call a “population vector”.
So basically a monkey with its limbs restrained was able to pick up, hold food, and feed itself when its brain started firing arm movement commands.<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4275245.stm"> This is some seriously unbelievable freaky awesome advanced stuff</a>, man and I am loving it!!!