Robotic Arm Controlled By Monkey Thoughts

mallumax writes "The BBC reports that Pittsburgh University scientists have succeeded in creating a robotic arm, controlled by probes inserted into the brain of monkeys. The probes interpret signals from individual nerve cells in the motor cortex. Monkeys were able to grasp and hold food with the robotic arm. Since the number of nerve signals for even small movements is huge the scientists used an averaging algorithm to obtain the movement signals."

Acceptable question now...

[andy314159pi]

The following is an acceptable question to ask:
"Should we really be attaching electronics to monkey neurons?"

Re:Tool use?

[glowimperial]

I would think that there is plenty of non-robotic evidence that monkeys use and make simple tools, are skilled and knowledgable in their use and pass tool knowledge from individual to individual already in the wild. Monkeys have been trained to operate tools and devices before this, both in and out of laboratory settings. I wouldn't consider this a breakthrough or in any way revealing about monkeys, I would consider it more of a robotic/hapic/man-machine interface breakthrough.

We're doomed

[cyberwiz01]

Besides the obvious addition of extra limbs a la Doc Oc from Spiderman, imagine what it would be like if everyday people had loads of mechanical limbs. As if drivers on cell phones werent bad enough. Now people can drive, talk on the phone, type something on their laptop, eat, and read the newspaper at the same time.

Re:Acceptable question now...

[Richie1984]

That raises the question "is animal reseach acceptable if it benefits a larger number of humans?", which is a debate beyond the scope of this article, in my opinion. There's no indication that any animals were harmed in the process, and there's no mention whether there is any lasting damage, or if the proceedure is reversable. But, if I were going to use the technology, I personally would like the answers to those questions beforehand.

Re:One step closer

[Anonymous Coward]

wtf?

Re:Tool use?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right that tool use is probably a natural extension of limb use. But if I had to guess, my guess would be that the limitations aren't mechanical, they are in terms of processing capacity. Using and adapting rapidly to tools you pick up as naturally as your own limbs requires a lot of extra "CPU power", and monkey brains may simply not be built to devote that much processing capacity to limbs. Maintaining extra processing capacity takes a lot of energy, so brains generally are just as large as they need to be to handle the tasks they need to handle. Any extra capacity is an evolutionary disadvantage. Adding a lot more capacity to the motor areas at first probably wasn't useful, until it turned out that tool use gave a real advantage to the one species that had it.

Re:And for the next version...

[porcupine8]

But, while I'm sure that if any harm came to the monkey in the end that animal rights groups would be all over them,

No, the animal rights groups don't care if or how much the animals suffer, they just don't want them being used in research, period. They're in no more danger of being firebombed if the monkey gets hurt or even killed than if the monkey is just fine.

Re:Acceptable question now...

[plastik55]

I've toured several labs and met several animals used in neuroscience research--owls, rats, cats, monkeys, bats, etc. I've never got the impression that they experienced a substantial amount of pain. They all seemed perfectly normal except for the odd bit of metal sticking out of their heads.

This kind of research takes a lot of time investment in individual animals--training takes a lot of one-on-one involvement, and scientists are no less likely than anyone else to form bonds with creatures they care for.

Re:Acceptable question now...

[DunbarTheInept]

The tricky thing with that question is that the research cannot be known to benefit humans until the decision to harm the monkeys is alredy made. If a technique was KNOWN to work, it wouldn't be necessary to test it on monkeys. The way research works, it tends to fail more often than it succeeds (that's normal), and so there are many cases where the monkey harm had no human benefit. Short-sighted people can look at those individual cases and try to make the argument that in those cases it was wrong. But they ignore the bigger picture, which is the total monkeys harmed compared to the total humans benefitted, globally across all reasearch on the planet. That's the only fair way to do it. If you have to decide in advance whether it will benefit humans before being allowed to do it, then no tests could ever be carried out, because you never really know for sure until the experiment is finished.

Chimp?

[Viking Coder]

Isn't that a chimp in the picture?

For being an article about science, they certainly used the wrong word ("monkey" instead of "ape") a lot.