Researchers at Duke University in North Carolina and at the Computational Brain Project of the Japan Science and Technology have collaborated on a project that hopes to develop prosthetic limbs which people with disabilities might one day be able to control mentally. The folks at Duke have "attached electrodes to one of two rhesus monkeys to monitor their brain activities, recording the brain cell responses as the monkey walked on a treadmill at various speeds while simultaneously sensors on the monkey's legs tracked the movements." The signals are sent to a 1.55-metre-tall robot in a laboratory in Kyoto and as the monkey walked, so, too, did the robot. Sounds very promising! In fact the monkey was able to control the robot even after the treadmill they were walking on was stopped, using only visual queues of the robot. The CBC has the complete story.
