Sebastian Anthony reports in "Extreme Tech" that,
An Israeli student has become the first person to meld his mind and movements with a robot surrogate, oravatar. Situated inside an fMRI scanner in Israel, Tirosh Shapira has controlled a humanoid robot some 2000 kilometers (1250 miles) away, at the Béziers Technology Institute in France, using just his mind.
The fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) reads his thoughts, a computer translates those thoughts into commands, and then those commands are sent across the internet to the robot in France. The system requires training: On its own, an fMRI can simply see the real-time blood flow in your brain. Training teaches the system that a particular “thought” (blood flow pattern) equates to a certain command. In this case, when Shapira thinks about moving forward or backward, the robot moves forward or backward; when Shapira thinks about moving one of his hands, the robot surrogate turns in that direction.
To complete the loop, the robot has a camera on its head, with the image being displayed in front of Shapira.
This area of research — robot surrogates — is of particular interest for two reasons: a) The military would love to send robots into battle, rather than soldiers, and b) Paralyzed, locked-in, and vegetative people could use robots to interact with the world, effectively replacing their damaged body with a shiny new robot. In recent years, lots of research has shown that many of these people still have perfectly functional brains — it’s just a matter of connecting them up to a working physical body.
Both the militaristic and medicinal applications will require a lot more research, though. In this case, an fMRI scanner (a huge and expensive piece of equipment) is used because it’s more accurate than an EEG — but moving forward, improved software might allow the use of an EEG, or perhaps head-mounted fNIRS(functional near-infrared spectroscopy) could be used. On the robotics side of the equation, a lot of work is being done to create robots are remarkably human-like, such as Boston Dynamics’ Petman, Kawada Industries’ HRP-4, and Meka Robotics’ anime head (videos embedded below).
The Rubber Hand Illusion - Horizon: Is Seeing Believing:"HRP-4" Humanoid Platform For Robotics:
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