Into All That

As reported by the BBC (who, incidentally, have a version of the above video where you can actually see the monkey’s face), a monkey with its arms restrained (to simulate armlessness) and cybernetic implants is able to use its artificial limbs purely by thought. Which is amazing on a lot of different levels. The fact that the the apparatus is so intuitive a monkey can figure it out — even with the steampunk-looking prototype — is amazing.

While the article reports that the monkey had a 61% success rate in feeding itself and my initial inclination was to put an “only” between “monkey” and “had”, I urge anyone skeptical of the amazingness of this advancement of the facts that a) this is a monkey, and b) this is a prototype. With a few years of serious love, the potential impact this technology will have on people with disabilities from limb amputations to, in the hopes of lead researcher Dr. Andrew Schwartz, “people with total paralysis” is mind boggling.

Dr. Schwartz and your team at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, buy yourselves a round of drinks and send me the tab.

This entry was posted on May 30, 2008 at 4:24 pm and is filed under True Story with tags cybernetics, robotic monkey, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.