Controlling robots with your mind

A human-robot mind-meld has been created by engineers at Boston University at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The researchers used a simple robot with arms, and programmed it to learn on the fly. Then they ran wires from the robot’s controls to electrodes attached to a person’s head. The electrodes picked up electrical signals generated by the person’s brain activity.

The robot was given a simple task: sorting a pile of paint cans and wires and putting each item in an appropriately labeled bin.

If the person saw the robot putting the wrong item into a bin, the person’s brain fired off an error message that the robot’s controls picked up, recognized, and redirected the robot’s movements in mid-task.

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