Tweet
DARPA arm: human trials
WIRED Danger Room....
Human Trials Next for Darpa’s Mind-Controlled Artificial Arm
Pentagon-backed scientists are getting ready to test thought-controlled prosthetic arms on human subjects, by rewiring their brains to fully integrate the artificial limbs.
Already in recent years, we’ve seen very lifelike artificial arms, monkeys nibbling bananas with mind-controlled robotic limbs and even humans whose muscle fibers have been wired to prosthetic devices. But this is the first time human brains will be opened up, implanted with a neural interface and then used to operate an artificial limb.
>
A team of scientists at Johns Hopkins, behind much of Darpa’s prosthetic progress thus far, have received a $34.5 million contract from the agency to manage the next stages of the project. Researchers will test the Modular Prosthetic Limb (MPL) on a human. The test subject’s thoughts will control the arm, which “offers 22 degrees of motion, including independent movement of each finger,†provides feedback that essentially restores a sense of touch, and weighs around 9 pounds. That’s about the same weight as a human arm.
The prosthetic will rely on micro-arrays, implanted into the brain, that record signals and transmit them to the device. It’s a similar design to that of the freaky monkey mind-control experiments, which have been ongoing at the University of Pittsburgh since at least 2004.
Within two years, Johns Hopkins scientists plan to test the prosthetic in five patients. And those researchers, alongside a Darpa-funded consortium from Caltech, University of Pittsburgh, University of Utah and the University of Chicago, also hope to expand prosthetic abilities to incorporate pressure and touch.
>
Pentagon-backed scientists are getting ready to test thought-controlled prosthetic arms on human subjects, by rewiring their brains to fully integrate the artificial limbs.
Already in recent years, we’ve seen very lifelike artificial arms, monkeys nibbling bananas with mind-controlled robotic limbs and even humans whose muscle fibers have been wired to prosthetic devices. But this is the first time human brains will be opened up, implanted with a neural interface and then used to operate an artificial limb.
>
A team of scientists at Johns Hopkins, behind much of Darpa’s prosthetic progress thus far, have received a $34.5 million contract from the agency to manage the next stages of the project. Researchers will test the Modular Prosthetic Limb (MPL) on a human. The test subject’s thoughts will control the arm, which “offers 22 degrees of motion, including independent movement of each finger,†provides feedback that essentially restores a sense of touch, and weighs around 9 pounds. That’s about the same weight as a human arm.
The prosthetic will rely on micro-arrays, implanted into the brain, that record signals and transmit them to the device. It’s a similar design to that of the freaky monkey mind-control experiments, which have been ongoing at the University of Pittsburgh since at least 2004.
Within two years, Johns Hopkins scientists plan to test the prosthetic in five patients. And those researchers, alongside a Darpa-funded consortium from Caltech, University of Pittsburgh, University of Utah and the University of Chicago, also hope to expand prosthetic abilities to incorporate pressure and touch.
>
Comment