RESEARCHERS DEMONSTRATE DIRECT BRAIN CONTROL OF HUMANOID ROBOT

A classic science-fiction scene shows a person wearing a metal skullcap with electrodes sticking out to detect the person’s thoughts. Another sci-fi movie standard depicts robots doing humans’ bidding. Now the two are combined, and in real life: University of Washington researchers can control the movement of a humanoid robot with signals from a human brain.
Rajesh Rao, associate professor of computer science and engineering, and his students have demonstrated that an individual can "order" a robot to move to specific locations and pick up specific objects merely by generating the proper brain waves that reflect the individual's instructions. The results were presented last week at the Current Trends in Brain-Computer Interfacing meeting in Whistler, B.C.

"This is really a proof-of-concept demonstration," Rao says. "It suggests that one day we might be able to use semi-autonomous robots for such jobs as helping disabled people or performing routine tasks in a person’s home."


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