Paralysed Man Moves in Mind-Reading Exoskeleton

A man has been able to move all four of his paralyzed limbs with a mind-controlled exoskeleton suit, French researchers report. From a report: Thibault, 30, said taking his first steps in the suit felt like being the "first man on the Moon." His movements, particularly walking, are far from perfect and the robo-suit is being used only in the lab. But researchers say the approach could one day improve patients' quality of life. Thibault had surgery to place two implants on the surface of the brain, covering the parts of the brain that control movement.

Sixty-four electrodes on each implant read the brain activity and beam the instructions to a nearby computer. Sophisticated computer software reads the brainwaves and turns them into instructions for controlling the exoskeleton. Thibault has to be strapped into the exoskeleton. And he can control each of the arms, maneuvering them in three-dimensional space.

Upgrade Point Earned

[stealth_finger]

Now mount some fucking miniguns and rocket launchers to the shoulders and we're in business.

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[jellomizer]

Watching some professional gamer play. I am unsure if mind reading technology will ever be more efferent then us pressing a button.

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[stealth_finger]

Maybe but it's nearly as cool XD

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[mobby_6kl]

There's quite a lot of latency in processing the stimulus and reacting to it with your muscles, but it works as well as it does because we can anticipate and plan in advance. So I think if we can make a decent bidirectional computer-brain interface, it should be comparable if not better than pushing a button with your fingers.

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[Daralantan]

I'd hate to be in the situation. But I'd hope I could find some humor in it and be like: "Hey, let's paint my frame. MAKE ME A GUNDAM" and also occasionally make loud robot noises while walking around.

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[stealth_finger]

Mk II will have a wicked hot rod paint scheme

So why does it take 12 secs just to open up MSWord

[jellomizer]

I find it interesting how computers are getting fast enough to read and analyses our brainwaves. However new computers running the latest version of office seem to constantly take a long time to open the App and still may lag at our typing.

(I actually once had a modern server with Office 95. on it. It was actually comical to watch it pop open so fast that you could barely catch the splash screen.)

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[Oswald McWeany]

It takes a lot of CPU to suppress Clippy from speaking. If you want faster office, the chains holding Clippy back from breaking onto your screen need to be released.

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[DontBeAMoran]

HDD or SSD? It makes a huge difference.

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[Wulf2k]

Watch your network traffic as you open anything recent.

The more that local processing power renders the old client/server model redundant, the more we force into the old client/server model.

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[Falos]

Photoshop 7.0 is decades old yet seems to have most of the same features. Certainly all the ones my novice ass uses. Launches sickeningly fast.

Meanwhile you need 16GB and an i7 to open major (ie "content"-riddled) websites. Want to play Pac-Man on your phone? Set aside 100MB because no one cares if we bloat the shit out of stuff with libraries repositories dependencies etc

https://xkcd.com/676/ [xkcd.com]

I hope...

[kackle]

I hope they're trying other treatments for the guy, too (I didn't RTFA). As I mentioned in another Slashdot post today, they've had some success stimulating nerve re-growth using electricity [newsweek.com].

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[Daralantan]

That'd be best... but if nothing else, something like this would be great to be capable of offering to people.

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[sinij]

(I didn't RTFA).

I also have a question of why a paralyzed man would move in with a mind-reading skeleton. I can't imagine such skeleton would be a good housemate.

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[SuricouRaven]

I wonder if it really needs the exoskeleton? He still has muscles. With further refinement, and a lot of probes jabbed into those muscles, they could be made to contract as required. Even if only to assist the more precise controls of the exoskeleton.

great to see progress

[bugs2squash]

I have to wonder if the sophisticated software could be reduced to just amplifying and cleaning up a few signals and let the brain figure out for itself what really needs to be done.

meanwhile millions of children starving to death

[2TecTom]

... and we continue to spend money on making sure rich kids have make work that feels important so they can assuage their guilt, just more first world arrogance and mismanagement by evil greedy jerks

Re: meanwhile millions of children starving to dea

[jnork]

Ahhh, the Nirvana Fallacy.

That's pretty cool, I wonder if he has a sense of

[Daralantan]

I wonder if this guy has a sense of humor about it? TFA says his injury is due to falling 15m at a dance club. I should hope he'd be willing to do "The Robot" in celebration of his new robo-frame.

We saw similar in the 2014 world cup in Brazil

[Andre Dias]

Five years ago, in 2014 in Brazil, a paraplegic did the initial kick in exoskeleton. The exoskeleton was developed by brazilian scientist Miguel Nicolelis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Nicolelis), who also works at Duke university.

Re: We saw similar in the 2014 world cup in Brazil

[Guru2Newbie]

Was it Futurama or another cartoon where a robot enthusiastically kicked off the ball-holder's head instead of the ball?

Human Locomotion is a horrible choice

[Vanyle]

I would want some kind of wheelchair or other means of transportation where I don't risk falling on my face once i step out from under that harness. More I/O ports for manipulating things like quasi-hands or something too.

Didn't the plot of "surrogates" start like this?

[mark-t]

Just sayin'....

Why is it always herky jerky?

[kimgkimg]

Why do these systems always need to be so herky jerky? It seems to me you could offload a lot of the processing to the exo-skeleton's processor by reducing this to what the intent of the motion is (in this case, walk forward in a straight line) instead of trying to mimic the firing of individual muscles. Boston Scientific has already perfected bipedal motion and balance, so seem like a neural extension of that would get you something that was far more useful and less data interface intensive.

not walking

[sdinfoserv]

marginally flailing limbs while being supported like a marionette is not, in any definition, walking. The entire gizmo is hanging from ceiling supports.

Can I have mine made as a Mach 2 plane?

[TigerPlish]

Make mine a Mach 2 plane. Bonus points if you have to think in a language other than yours.

"Plane, launch missle"

*conk*
*clinkcclink*
*gukgukgukguk*
*ptooieptooie*
*muddlemuddle*
*fsssssssssshhhSssss*
*swizzleswizzle*

*beat*

"Plane, I said launch middle, not make me an old fashioned!!*