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A thought controlled robot (aka brain controlled robot) has been revealed by researchers at the Neural Systems Lab at the University of Washington. By wearing a special hat with 32 scalp electrodes, a human can move the robot and make it pick up objects by simply thinking. One of the U of W researchers, Rajesh Rao, suggested, “One day we might be able to use semi-autonomous robots for helping disabled people.”
Thought controlled devices aren’t new to Trend Hunter. Earlier in the year, we found Thought Controlled Video Games and a Thought Controlled Bionic Arm.
A classic science-fiction scene shows a person wearing a metal skullcap with electrodes sticking out to detect the person’s thoughts. Another sci-fi movie standard depicts robots doing humans’ bidding. Now the two are combined, and in real life: University of Washington researchers can control the movement of a humanoid robot with signals from a human brain.
Rajesh Rao, associate professor of computer science and engineering, and his students have demonstrated that an individual can "order" a robot to move to specific locations and pick up specific objects merely by generating the proper brain waves that reflect the individual's instructions. The results were presented last week at the Current Trends in Brain-Computer Interfacing meeting in Whistler, B.C.
(physorg)
References: physorg, techeblog
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