Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Flipside on December 17, 2012, 10:21:25 am
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20731973
Basically, a device that allows a paralyzed woman to control a robot arm with a surprising degree of dexterity via chips implanted into her brain. Fascinating stuff :)
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I once met a guy who works on this sort of tech. Wheelchair controls, mostly, but I imagine that's similar in it's workings. And who says Polish never invented anything? :) I don't remember the details now though, and I can't quote any concrete sources (we only talked about it for a while).
What I find really exciting is the perspective of connecting this tech with a powered exoskeleton. Getting paralyzed could go from being a life sentence to a somewhat costly inconvenience. All this within our lifetime, the tech's already there, it just needs to become cheaper.
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I'm not sure who started "the Polish are useless" meme, but it's just as offensive as verbal assaults on the Jews.
That aside, I've heard of these before. Although I'm pleased to know this helps people, I'm still far more hopeful for medical science in which we re-grow tissue to repair the nervous system.
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ive done some telepresence stuff with robots, its kind of disorienting. i wish i could stick the system in my r/c helicopter, but alas its very short range.
i wonder how the control system deals with feedback. its very easy to map out a small region of neural activity to a robot, its another to provide usable neural feedback. i also wonder if you can electronically bypass spinal cord injuries, rather than sending the impulses to a robot to send them to other chips connected to nerves that control the disconnected musculature.
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I'm not sure who started "the Polish are useless" meme, but it's just as offensive as verbal assaults on the Jews.
That aside, I've heard of these before. Although I'm pleased to know this helps people, I'm still far more hopeful for medical science in which we re-grow tissue to repair the nervous system.
Dragon is Polish, he's allowed to be offensive. :p
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ive done some telepresence stuff with robots, its kind of disorienting. i wish i could stick the system in my r/c helicopter, but alas its very short range.
i wonder how the control system deals with feedback. its very easy to map out a small region of neural activity to a robot, its another to provide usable neural feedback. i also wonder if you can electronically bypass spinal cord injuries, rather than sending the impulses to a robot to send them to other chips connected to nerves that control the disconnected musculature.
I've actually heard something not dissimilar to this being discussed recently during my IT Degree, a kind of 'modem' that skipped damaged nerve sections, in fact, even with all the advances of late, there's still a strong chance that kind of technology will be common before mind controlled prosthetics are. This is because, as one of the Team put it, "We don't have to worry what the signals mean, just about where they go."
This was actually suggested to be used in conjunction with stem-cell treatment to regrow the damaged nerve-clusters.