Idoya
is a normal ape. However, a rigorous training schedule means that she can now
walk on a treadmill and that too at varying speeds. On Thursday, this ability
of the 12-pond, 21-inch monkey was on display. She sent her brain waves and
made a 200-pound robot walk on a treadmill.
The
experiment
The
experiment was conducted by Dr. Miguel A. L. Nicolelis, a neuroscientist at Duke
University. Idoya’s brain saignals
were transferred all the way from North Carolina
to Kyoto, where the robot was
located. Gordon Cheng and his associates at ATR Computational Neuroscience
Laboratories in Kyoto, controlled
robot – named CB for Computational Brain.
Using
a system called brain machine interface, animals or humans can use their brain
activity to control an external device. But that requires fitting electrodes
into relevant body parts. Idoya was fitted with electrodes in the leg area of
her brain. These recorded the neuron-activity in her brains. In addition a high
speed camera captured her walking movements on video. The video and brain
recordings were combined and translated so that computer could understand and
predict them. On Thursday these computer interpretations were sent over the
Internet to Computational Brain (CB – the robot) in Japan.
CB
is one heck of a robot and can dance, squat, point and feel ground just like
humans. It readily interpreted these monkey-signals to walk. Iboya played her
part nicely and kept CB going, by watching the back of CB’s links on a large
screen.
Breakthrough?
The
research has important implications for humans. It proves that things can be
controlled using brain waves. Fitted with electrodes in brain, paralyzed people
could control external skeletons worn on their bodies to elicit desired actions
– walk for instance.
But
before that can happen, experiments will continue on primates like Idoya. As
Dr. Nicolelis clichéd it:
That’s
one small step for a robot and one giant leap for a primate.
