Tomorrow, the robots will include your thoughts

Designed to assist humans in their daily ungrateful, Japanese robots will not wait so ordered them aloud to rid the table to get to work: suffice it to think and to act.

Researchers from the Japanese car manufacturer Honda, designer of humanoid robot Asimo, developed a technology that allows a human to partially control the biped, or on other machines, simply by pensée.Leur device “commands brain” is based on a new method for analyzing the brain activity, carried out through a big computer with a headset wrapped with various sensors.

Without lifting a finger or speak a human wearing this equipment may order Asimo to lift a hand or a leg, gestures to be made almost on the spot.

According to researchers, humans need only imagine the mental representation of a hand rising to the robot repeated this action.

“We’re at an early stage, but we caressons the dream of one day integrating technology into various machines,” says, Yasuhisa Arai, director of research institute of Honda.

The group considers the domestic appliances, computers, robotic assistants and of course … automobiles.

The system requires that specific brain activity associated with each thought is first stored in a database, then to allow the recognition of the direction imagined from a predetermined list.

Honda technique differs from other modes of control by the brain already presented, in that it combines two types of brain measurement (electrical activity of cells, for electrodes, and blood flow by infrared spectroscopy), all of which are analyzed according to a new process.

The recognition rate of gestures reaches 90% thanks to the newly created algorithms, according to Honda, against 50% without.

This work is carried out in collaboration with the International Institute of Advanced Telecommunications Research (ATR) and the manufacturer of precision instruments Shimadzu.