Japanese robot walks like a monkey
TOKYO (AFP) — It may walk like a Japanese robot, but it's thinking like a monkey in the United States. Japanese and US researchers said Wednesday they have created a humanoid robot that acts according to the brain activity of a monkey all the way across the Pacific.
The experiment was part of efforts to develop prosthetic limbs which can be mentally controlled by people with disabilities.
A laboratory in the western Japanese city of Kyoto unveiled a 155-centimetre (62-inch) tall humanoid, with a friendly-looking face including bulging black eyes, who walked via signals coming into its legs through wires.
Researchers said the robot was responding to the cortical brain activity of a monkey that was walking attached to wires on a treadmill at Duke University in North Carolina. The signal was sent via the Internet.