In a breakthrough for future human prosthetic limbs, two monkeys at the University of Pittsburgh have successfully thought-operated a robot arm and used it to feed themselves for the first time. The macaques have electrodes implanted in their brains, monitoring about 100 cells, the signals from which drive the robot arm. The trained monkeys can now use the arm to grab food, even if it’s moved around, and often reach for more while still chewing on the first treat. They’d better not show them any cyborg smasher movies though: as the saying goes “monkey see… monkey do”, eh? [New Scientist]
Our Philip K. Dick-obsessed cousins apparently have their very own biogeek sage, who today tackles that most pressing of sci-fi tech questions: Where are my cybernetic implants? Short answer: They’re coming, it’s just that building people parts out of metal and plastic is hard! The sense of touch is a tricky, and our nerves are not exactly open source. Still there’s a litany of proto-Luke Skywalker quality cyborg parts out there that are pretty good, ugly: Bionic hands, arms and retinas oh my! For an approximate shipping date on your car crushing arm, hit up io9. [io9]
