A 2001 Technology Review article described experiments done by Miguel Nicolelis, in which a monkey used brain signals to remotely control a simple robotic arm (shown in front of Nicolelis).
Credit: Patricia Mcdonough
Miguel Nicolelis continues to lead the way in neural-implant technology.
In January a rhesus monkey named Idoya did what no other creature has done before: she made a robot walk just by thinking about it. All Idoya had to do was imagine taking a step, and the robot would actually take it.
At the behest of signals sent over the Internet from electrodes in Idoya's brain, the 200-pound robot began to walk on a treadmill in Kyoto, Japan. This while the monkey was on the other side of the world--in Miguel Nicolelis's lab at the Center for Neuroengineering at Duke University in Durham, NC. This telekinetic remote control was the latest achievement made possible by Nicolelis's research on a novel brain-machine interface--a technology singled out as one of the TR10 in 2001.
To read the entire article you must log in:
Most of our content — all daily news, blogs, and videos — is free. Magazine stories are paid. To read this story, you must have a subscription or you must use a reading credit. Registration to Technology Review is free and entitles registrants to three free reading credits.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
Our list of the 50 most innovative companies, including the following:
On Twitter
Become a Fan on Facebook
Subscribe to the Feed