Paralysed people have learnt to control robots remotely with their thoughts

“19 people – including nine quadriplegics and 10 participants who weren’t disabled – across Germany, Italy and Switzerland were hooked up to an electrode-covered cap, which analyses their brain signals and converts them into electronic instructions for a robot.

These instructions were sent via the Internet to a remote computer hooked up to a simple, wheeled robot. Using just their thoughts, the patient’s were able to easily move this robot around, seeing everything their robot does through Skype. The patient’s face also appears on the computer screen.

“Each of the nine subjects with disabilities managed to remotely control the robot with ease after less than 10 days of training,” lead researcher José del R. Millán, from the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, explained in a press release. You can see the robots in action here: youtube.com.

Read the full article at sciencealert.com.

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