U.S. researchers made monkeys able to operate robotic arms to feed themselves, relying only on brain signal manipulation, according to media reports Thursday.
"They are using a motorized prosthetic arm to reach out, grab and bring the food back to their face," said Andrew Schwartz of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, whose study will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Nature.
This cutting-edge development in the field of neuro-prosthetics was made possible by linking up neural pathways in the voluntary movement region of the monkey's brain to a specially designed computer software program. In turn, the monkey's mental "firings" were turned into fluid and natural prosthetic movements -- enabling arm-restrained primates to grip and eat marshmallows and fruit with a claw-like robotic hand.
"We record those patterns of action potential, interpret them with a computer and extract the monkey's intention to move. That serves as a control signal to the robot," said Schwartz.
The researchers noted it takes about three days for a monkey to learn to operate the arm, and they continuously improve.
So far, they have trained two monkeys to feed themselves with the robotic arm. The monkeys sit in a chair with their arms gently restrained in sleeves that keep them from simply grabbing the food on their own.
The researchers concluded, in fact, that the monkeys ultimately came to view the arms as extensions of their own bodies.
The ultimate goal is to develop a functional prosthetic devices for fully paralyzed individuals.
Source:Xinhua/Agencies
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