Brain controlled robots.

Abstract

In January 2008, Duke University and the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) publicized their successful control of a brain-machine interface for a humanoid robot by a monkey brain across the Pacific Ocean. The activities of a few hundred neurons were recorded from a monkey's motor cortex in Miguel Nicolelis's lab at Duke University, and the kinematic features of monkey locomotion on a treadmill were decoded from neural firing rates in real time. The decoded information was sent to a humanoid robot, CB-i, in ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories located in Kyoto, Japan. This robot was developed by the JST International Collaborative Research Project (ICORP) as the "Computational Brain Project." CB-i's locomotion-like movement was video-recorded and projected on a screen in front of the monkey. Although the bidirectional communication used a conventional Internet connection, its delay was suppressed below one over several seconds, partly due to a video-streaming technique, and this encouraged the monkey's voluntary locomotion and influenced its brain activity. This commentary introduces the background and future directions of the brain-controlled robot.