Finally, the good people at Honda have developed the technology to allow our thoughts to control machines. I think I speak for everyone when I say, “It’s about time.”
Japanese automaker Honda has developed technology that uses brain signals to control a robot’s moves, hoping to someday link a person’s thoughts with machines in everyday life.
In the future, the technology that Honda Motor Co. researched with ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories may substitute for a keyboard or cell phone or help people with spinal injuries move their limbs, researchers said Wednesday.
In a video demonstration in Tokyo, patterns of the changes in the brain taken by an MRI machine, like those used in hospitals, were relayed to a robotic hand.
A person in the MRI machine made a fist, spread his fingers and then made a V-sign. Several seconds later, the robotic hand made the same movements. Further research would be needed to decode more complex movements.
The machine for reading the brain patterns would also have to become smaller and lighter – like a cap that people can wear as they move about, said ATR researcher Yukiyasu Kamitani.
What Honda calls a “brain-machine interface” is an improvement over past ways, such as those that required the brain to be opened surgically to connect to wires.
Oh glory to the ways technology has simplified our lives. Now all I need is a baseball cap sized MRI to save me the hassle of manual dialing cell numbers. THANKS HONDA!
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