Monkey's Thoughts Make Robot Walk 146
geekbits writes "For all those who have at one time or another been too lazy to get up off the couch and go to the fridge and get a beer, heat up some pizza, or change the channel when the remote is missing, we may be one step closer to being able to keep our tushes parked just a little while longer. There may also be some slightly more noble implications here. According to an article in The New York Times, in an experiment at Duke University, a 12-pound, 32-inch monkey made a 200-pound, 5-foot humanoid robot walk on a treadmill using only her brain activity. She was in North Carolina, and the robot was in Japan."
monkey business (Score:4, Insightful)
Several things make me question that. One, why is the robot in north Carolina and the monkey in Japan? It's just for show. Nothing of scientific significance is being demonstrated by that. We all know that internet can connect two gizmos across large distances. The experiment could have been conducted much more simply at one location and made no less effective a point (except to clueless investors maybe).
Secondly, because of the distance, there is a significant delay (TFA says 250ms, about what I might have guessed.) This would seem to preclude the monkey being able to control the robots actuators in any direct sense. I.e. lift thigh, swing lower leg forward, position foot, lower thigh, positioning body over front leg. Walking is a "controlled fall". No way you could issue all those commands 250ms ahead of seeing or feeling their effect. You'd trip and fall.
So, what is the monkey really doing? I doubt if he is even thinking "left, right, left, right" because even that would be hard to coordinate with so much lag.
Finally, why is there a damn robot in the first place? Wouldn't it be much easier to have the commands control a computer animation? You could do that in such a way that the model would look much more interesting to the monkey... it could look like another monkey, a giant walking banana, whatever.
My guess is that they are simply getting a binary command value from the monkey: "walk" or "don't walk". And the whole robot thing is just for effect. I hate to be such a cynic but this looks like showmanship, not science. If that is the case then this is equivalent to the simple video games that have been demonstrated using brain control.
However, I could certainly imagine that the journalist totally failed to understand the experiment and maybe something important was lost in his explanation of it.
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Nah, real monkeys do it in a tree
Re:monkey business (Score:5, Interesting)
To sum up, it was a hell of a lot cheaper and faster that way.
Re:monkey business (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:monkey business (Score:5, Insightful)
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at first the monkey controlled the arm using the joystick while a computer did brain reads.
then they turned of the joystick, but let the monkey still have it, and used only the brain signals for control.
iirc, at some point the monkey let go of the joystick and just sat there while the arm kept moving, something that was not planed by the researchers at all. basically the monkey was controlling the arm by thought alone.
now
It's using CPGs, just like the monkey's real legs. (Score:2, Interesting)
What these guys are doing is capturing the "system calls" from the brain, and sending them to *their own* central pattern generators in the robot. Accor
Oblig. GitS (Score:1)
Exciting stuff.
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Re:monkey business (Score:4, Informative)
TFA is not very clear about the most important part of this, but other [informationweek.com] reports [eetimes.com] spell it out more clearly: "The most stunning finding is that when we stopped the treadmill and the monkey ceased to move its legs, it was able to sustain the locomotion of the robot for a few minutes -- just by thinking -- using only the visual feedback of the robot in Japan."
The reason for using a robot rather than an animation is that they wanted to prove that neural signals could actually be used to drive real motors. I also think it's interesting that they worked out how to interpret neural signals in the brain by correlating neural impulses with the monkey's own leg motions, this was not a case of intercepting signals traveling along muscle-control nerves. I agree there seems to be no particular reason other than showmanship to do this intercontinentally, though! And in fact the monkey was able to keep the system working through a 250 ms delay, which is an interesting finding because it means that such systems don't need to respond to controls instantly but can tolerate some delay. However, they didn't really need to be on different continents to test that.
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If you had built a robot in Japan and your friend figured out a way to read a monkeys thoughts in N
Re:monkey business (Score:5, Insightful)
No, reading the monkey's brain has been done many times before. This report is gee-whiz, but nothing in it is very innovative.
When you walk, you don't think "left, right, left, right." A lot of the rhythm generator is accomplished by central pattern generators, many of the ones involved are in the spinal cord. The same way the brain engages the walk routine built into downstream parts of the nervous system, the brain can engage the walk routine built into a Japanese robot.
There is a robot because this group's ultimately goal is to develop neural prosthetics. They have done experiments controlling computer animations, as have quite a few other research groups.
You have a good point here. How finely grained is the monkey's control of the robot? The article does not tell us. I looked unsuccessfully for a corresponding scientific publication. I hope this study is published soon with more details about how specific and how precise the control really is.
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Electrophysiology in the monkey (or other animals like cats) has been done for decades. I doubt Miguel Nicolelis [wikipedia.org] was the first to create a neural prosthetic, but he has been very successful at doing so. Some of his publications are listed in that article, and a link to his lab website is there too.
I first heard about him on a rerun of the PBS show "Innovations" that discussed several prosthetics [pbs.org], including Dobelle's vision prosthetic. The episode aired in 2004, which meant it was pr
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Actually the article does mention that they mapped the neurons firing during each portion of the motion.
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These questions are some of the ones I had in mind. The article does not go into this level of detail.
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Perhaps not, but I understand that when monkeys walk, they think, "Developers, developers, developers."
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Not necessarily; depends how much you lean forward and where you (thus) have your center of gravity.
While I agree that the model is considered 'normal' within so called 'Western' societies, it is not the most efficient (IMHO).
CC.
Combination of previous works (Score:3, Interesting)
Monkey mind reading has been done before.
Monkey controlling a robotic arm has been done before too, and as far as I remember, the monkey even got it to the point of controlling the robotic arm without moving herself.
Remote controlling of robots has been done before (trans-atlantic surgery operation, the surgeon operating the robot in the US and the patient being in Europe).
And as pointed by other
More on Promising Applications (Score:1)
Future DARPA project (Score:1)
Balance is the problem (Score:2)
the biggest draw back is the latency.
For slow and controlled motions like in the context of scientists or doctors using remote controlled robots, there's not much problem. Just as long as they don't move to fast to be still able to control the motions even with the lag.
For reflex based fast movement that
ROLLOUT the ROBOTIC WAGELESS ECONOMY (Score:1)
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Stop picking on the monkey! (Score:2)
If they really wanted a good test, they would have used a champion Starcraft player from South Korea! Talk about reflexes and planning. These guys can issue so many commands a second it boggles the mind.
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The control was great... (Score:5, Funny)
Monkey : Move Foot Forward
600ms later...
Robot : OK....Oh no, I'm falling over, quick move the other foot
600ms later...
Monkey : Move Other Foot Forward
600ms later...
Robot : I can't do that dave, I've fallen over
Although I assume in actuallity they left most of the balance control to the robot end of things; either that or the Monkey was psychic.
(Or more likely they've got a nice low-latency academic link)
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It's interesting that no actual pictures of the monkey seem to have been published... my theory is that the monkey is in such a wired-
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But first, you don't show the actual experimental animal, especially when it's in the US. For security as well as PR reasons, few labs accept filming experiments directly. Second, no, the robot isn't balancing. Just getting the actual motor responses is plenty for now (as you guess, the actual feedback can't be done directly since the body and configuration isn't the same; you need to "translate" intention).
But, but... (Score:2)
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"Monkey hate technology"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_QsCXm1vrk [youtube.com]
James Kochalka Superstar [jameskocha...erstar.net]
Look article. Now monkey control robot. Robot walk for monkey, even when monkey stop walk. Monkey p0wn robot. Monkey win!
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Reminds me of the usual... (Score:1, Funny)
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Movie plot (Score:2)
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http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/01/14/science/0115-sci-ROBOT_190.jpg [nytimes.com]
At the risk of being redundant (Score:1)
F_T
What's newsworth about this? (Score:2)
SUre controlling the robot with your brain is kind of cool, but when it has no power supply - now that's cool!
yet another... (Score:2, Funny)
Tell me that graphic didn't come from The Onion.
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Perhaps even more alarmingly, quite a few of their more outlandish stories have actually come true several years later.
(This [theonion.com] being one of the funniest such stories...)
It would be interesting to know how they mapped it (Score:1)
It would be interesting to see how they mapped the neurons -> robot. Something like this:
Neuron Mapping Factor Adjustment(TM):
Direct Neuron Mapping |-------||---| "Thinking about walking patterns" triggers robot walking code.
Re:It would be interesting to know how they mapped (Score:4, Insightful)
In humans, obtain two recordings (one blank and one while thinking about doing X), then diff the two and map to X'.
In monkeys, also get two recordings (one blank and one while doing X), then diff the two and also map to X', hoping that doing X reads the same as thinking about doing X.
You'd need to repeat these steps a bunch of times to get good signal to noise, and also need several controls (thinking about Y, Z) to make sure the mapping is specific enough. Normally, the technique is just good enough to allow quadriplegics to click buttons and such, but takes lots of effort and patience (and lots of costly equipment).
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Step 1: Take reading "thinking of nothing" (in reality thinking of banging female researcher)
Step 2: Take reading "thinking of walking" (thinking of banging female researcher on treadmill)
Step 3: Lose funding when you can't explain why the robot keeps doing, ahem - what it is doing
In the year 5555 (Score:3, Funny)
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Pretty Pictures (Score:1)
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http://www.random-good-stuff.com/2007/02/20/video-monkey-controls-robotic-arm-with-mind-beware-of-robot-monkeys/ [random-good-stuff.com]
The point? Proof of concept for investors I would suspect. Tele presence is now much more closer to reality. There will be big money in this stuff down the line. I remember reading a forward looking military report that planned on mind controlled planes in 2020 or something like
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You're right, though - a good film and the parallels between Soviet Russia and modern US/UK are striking.
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Yes, I work in brain research.
Don't put your robot under control of a monkey! (Score:5, Funny)
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This is just the prototype... (Score:2)
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I hope they wore helmets (Score:1)
Monkeys Thoughts Make Robot Walk... You see, (Score:2)
I see an infinite number of monkeys (chimpanzees) and an infinite number of T9-alloy exoskeletons, and I STILL don't see War and Peace. I see WAR and PIECES (of battle-wrecked exoskeletons...
NO, I not am on durgs.
monkey thoughts (Score:4, Informative)
watch after 0:44, the monkey learnt how to control the robotic arm with its thoughts in order to feed itself:)
MONKEY VS. ROBOT!!! (Score:2)
ROBOTIC MARCHING BAND (Score:1)
Feh. (Score:2)
Oh wait...
Bah! (Score:2)
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Cuz there's some things the rats just won't do.
another stupid joke (Score:1)
Surrender is Imminent (Score:1)
Yes, but... (Score:3, Funny)
This isn't that surprising (Score:2)
Previous Research (Score:1)
Obligatory Sealab... (Score:1)
This will have a number of uses (Score:2)
Give them a remote-controlled plane... (Score:1)
Finally settled! Monkey WINS! (Score:1)
Well I guess that answered that. Now what about the "Ninja vs Pirate" question?
The robot just wants to kill the monkey (Score:2)
Robot Monkey... (Score:2, Funny)
Isn't this how Planet of the Apes started? (Score:1)
And I thought the holodeck would be the last thing we ever invented...
Sims was right (Score:2)
Monkey Mecha! (Score:1)
Enh (Score:2)
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GW is NOT a monkey ... (Score:2)
Be sure to always mount your scratch monkey (Score:2)
World Robot Dominations (Score:1)
Typewriters (Score:1)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem [wikipedia.org]
1. Clone infinite number of monkeys
2. Use new monkey-brain interface to connect to typewriters
3. Wait for all great books to be written
4. ???
5. Profit!!!
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Hmmmmm..... (Score:1)
All your banana are belong to us. (Score:2)
All your banana are belong to us.
You are on the way to the complete works of Shakespeare.
I, for one... (Score:1)
Extreme tangential thread (Score:2)
Then you can imagine that robots have been designed to think like monkeys, which I think we can all agree, would be the substance of the article, in a world better than the one we are currently living in.
The Monkey (Score:1)
Which... (Score:1)
Mech Warriors?
Monkey overlords?
I give up.
Scratch Monkey (Score:2)
From the jargon file [catb.org]:
Origins of the Great Clone War of 2012 (Score:1)
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In 2000 and again in 2004 they were welcomed.