Brain-powered gladiator robot gears for the showdown
In the clash of the mechanical titans, or say the fist-for-fist of the robotic gladiators at the Robo-One robot fighting tournament, beginning Sept. 26 at Toyama, there’ll be a mind controlled gladiator bot that the other’s will have to deal with. This warrior robot that’s steered by its controller's neural signals is perhaps the only neural signal-controlled combat robot – and his tactics are going to be novel, watch it folks.
A bipedal robot fighter this, weighs 2 kg and is only 50cm, small yes, but don’t count it out. Made by Taku Ichikawa, a fourth year student at the University of Electro-Communications, the bot is connected to Ichikawa’s skull by a set of 12 electrodes. These electrodes measure Ichikawa’s neural activity, and thus by the commands of his brain steer the robot into and through the combat.
The neural commands are good to help the killbot walk forward, rotate right and use an arm to stab – hey you heard, he cannot go backwards, so your defense should be to attack, if you want to stand a chance against the fellow, but yeah the on board sensor will help lift they bot up when he is down. It take about 1.5 second for Ichikawa's thoughts to be transformed into robot’s action, while a second for the electrodes to read the neural signals, and another 0.5 seconds to determine which movement is intended.
Based on the brain controlled robot and the technology employed, Ichikawa’s helped develop a hands-free wheelchair project also to be controlled by the brain. We may be waiting for this, yes, impatiently.
Via: Mainichi
