Iyoda and the Thought Experiments

I read this article in the New York Times this morning and think that this is just Incredible! The monkey named Iyoda, who was in NC, was able to make the robot in Japan, walk on a treadmill by looking at a TV screen with the Robots legs on the treadmill. Someday we will all be able to type into the computer with just our thoughts. At least we won't get carpal tunnel.

"January 15, 2008
Monkey’s Thoughts Propel Robot, a Step That May Help Humans
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
If Idoya could talk, she would have plenty to boast about.
On Thursday, the 12-pound, 32-inch monkey made a 200-pound, 5-foot humanoid robot walk on a treadmill using only her brain activity.
She was in North Carolina, and the robot was in Japan.
It was the first time that brain signals had been used to make a robot walk, said Dr. Miguel A. L. Nicolelis, a neuroscientist at Duke University whose laboratory designed and carried out the experiment.
In 2003, Dr. Nicolelis’s team proved that monkeys could use their thoughts alone to control a robotic arm for reaching and grasping.
These experiments, Dr. Nicolelis said, are the first steps toward a brain machine interface that might permit paralyzed people to walk by directing devices with their thoughts. Electrodes in the person’s brain would send signals to a device worn on the hip, like a cell phone or pager, that would relay those signals to a pair of braces, a kind of external skeleton, worn on the legs. ...." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/science/15robo.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin For whole article.