You’ve probably seen movies and shows like The Six Million Dollar Man where the protagonist is ‘upgraded’ with some pretty spectacular tech.
This is the real-world version of that – to a degree.
Scientists are in the early stages of testing a brain-controlled exoskeleton on a man with four paralysed limbs.
According to The Daily Beast, the French team published the results of a two-year trial in The Lancet, along with the release of a video that showed the tetraplegic patient walking with the help of a ceiling-mounted harness and the robotic apparatus.
Check it out:
It works by creating a path of communication between the brain and the robotic exoskeleton.
Electrodes implanted in his head collected brain signals, sent them to a decoding algorithm, which transmitted instructions to the whole-body exoskeleton, and to a video-game avatar. Between the avatar and the exoskeleton, he was able to take 480 steps over the course of 39 sessions.
The researchers said their next challenge is figuring out how to give a patient enough equilibrium so the exoskeleton will work without a harness. They also noted that they are far from clinical application, cautioning against a “danger of hype.”
While we’ll avoid ‘hype’, it’s still undeniably cool.
Boston Dynamics should get involved.
If they stopped making creepy robots that do gymnastics routines and set their minds to solving the equilibrium on this machine, I’d be less inclined to fear them.
[source:dailybeast]
