High speed robot hand

This short video is of a series of demonstrations of a highly capable robotic hand executing tasks that humans could never match in terms of pace. It dribbles so fast all you see is a blur. Rice isn’t too small, and watching the hand catch a phone is not just wild, it’s downright creepy. The lack of overcompensation in its responses to complex, three-dimensional motion data is off – we could never replicate it as lowly humans.

Bionic eyes to be tested next year

Bionic Vision Australia plans to complete when bionic eye testing next year. Using 98 separate electrodes, the implanted chip will help those with genetic eye conditions see large objects such as buildings and elephants (if you happen to live amongst elephants).

It will be a camera built into a pair of glasses and wired to an external processing device. That information is then sent to the aforementioned implant and finally it reaches the vision processing center of the brain.

The company doesn't plan to stop there: a "high-acuity device" that would help those same folks recognise smaller things like facial features. Presuming it works, it will join the other bionic implants.

Via The Verge

Soon, You May Download New Skills to Your Brain

New research suggests it may be possible to learn complex tasks with little to no conscious effort, just like in The Matrix.

PROBLEM: Unlike Neo in The Matrix or the titular superspy in the comedy series Chuck, we can't master kung fu just by beaming information to our brain. We have to put in time and effort to learn new skills.

METHODOLOGY: Researchers from Boston University and Japan's ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories designed a decoded functional MRI neurofeedback method that induces a pre-recorded activation pattern in targeted early visual brain areas that could also produce the pattern through regular learning. They then tested whether repetitions of the fMRI pattern caused an improvement in the performance of that visual feature.

RESULTS: The experiments successfully demonstrated that, through a person's visual cortex, decoded fMRI could be used to impart brain activity patterns that match a previously known target state. Interestingly, behavioral data obtained before and after the neurofeedback training showed improved performance of the relevant visual tasks especially when the subjects were unaware of the nature of what they were learning.

Read more at The Atlantic

Cyborg Insects Could Be First Responders in Rescue Situations

A group at the University of Michigan has a plan to unleash cyborg insects equipped with sensors as first responders in dangerous environments.

The bugs carry small devices on their backs that harvest the energy of wing movements, and use it to power cameras, microphones, sensors and communication equipment.

"Through energy scavenging, we could potential power cameras, microphones and other sensors and communication equipment that an insect could carry aboard a tiny backpack," says Professor Khalil Najafi, chair of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Michigan. "We could send these 'bugged' bugs into dangerous or enclosed environments where we would not want humans to go."

via ScienceDaily

Monkeys' brain waves offer paraplegics hope

Monkeys have been trained to control a virtual arm on a computer screen using only their brain waves. Scientists say the animals were also able use the arm to sense the texture of different virtual objects.

Writing in the journal Nature, the researchers say their work could speed up the development of wearable exoskeletons. This technology could help quadriplegic patients not only regain movement but a sense of touch as well.

via BBC

IBM cooks up a new silicon brain

What you are about to read is not science fiction. IBM, the 100-year-old company that started out making old-fashioned cash registers and “business tabulating machines” has come up with a new chip that marries our brain’s architecture with silicon guts. Like people, it learns instead of being programmed and like a good semiconductor, it’s easy to make based on today’s chip production technologies. While it might have started out as a research project seeking to develop chips that deliver mor oomph while being stingy about power consumption, today it is a radical idea that takes computing to more places and in doing so potentially unleashes new waves of innovation.

“The goal is not to replace today’s computers. It’s to really take the road less traveled and build new generation of computers with a totally new approach to problems in business and science and government,” Modha says. “If today’s computers are left brained, rational and sequential then cognitive computing is intuitive and right-brained and slow, but the two together can become the future of our civilization’s computing stack.”

via Gigaom

Reverse engineering a human brain

Bluebrain | Year Two from Couple 3 Films on Vimeo.

Henry Markram is attempting to reverse engineer an entire brain, one neuron at a time, on IBM supercomputers. This piece is the Year Two preview to director Noah Hutton's 10-year film-in-the-making that will chronicle the development of The Blue Brain Project (bluebrain.epfl.ch), a landmark endeavor in modern neuroscience, culminating in a documentary feature in 2020.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee has developed amputees a bionic "to walk without the leg-dragging gait characteristic of conventional artificial legs". Unlike the average peg-leg, the Vanderbilt leg has motors in the knee and ankle to actively move like the real thing. Sensors and microprocessors predict what the user is about to do and the leg moves accordingly. The leg itself is also pretty light on power, running for up to three days (or 14 kilometers) on a single charge.

The Vanderbilt leg is seen above worn by Craig Hutto, left, and Professor Michael Goldfarb, who is leading the team at VU. The leg itself has been in development for always seven years now, and packs in quite a bit of tech.

From Vanderbilt:
The device uses the latest advances in computer, sensor, electric motor and battery technology to give it bionic capabilities: It is the first prosthetic with powered knee and ankle joints that operate in unison. It comes equipped with sensors that monitor its user's motion. It has microprocessors programmed to use this data to predict what the person is trying to do and operate the device in ways that facilitate these movements.



via Wired and the Vanderbilt Unversity

Epidermal devices integrate electronics into the body

A small electronic device slapped onto the skin like a temporary tattoo could bring us closer to a future that melds body and machine, a cyborg world where people have cell phones embedded in their throats and Internet browsers literally at their fingertips.

“This is a huge breakthrough,” says nanoengineer Michael McAlpine of Princeton University. “This goes beyond Dick Tracy calling someone with a cell phone on the wrist. It’s having the wrist itself house the device so it’s always with you.”

via ScienceNews