The robot that reads your mind to train itself
Baku, October 25 (AZERTAC). Rajesh Rao is a man who believes that the best type of robotic helper is one who can read your mind, according to BBC News.
In fact, he`s more than just an advocate of mind-controlled robots; he believes in training them through the power of thought alone.
His team at the Neural Systems Laboratory, University of Washington, hopes to take brain-computer interface (BCI) technology to the next level by attempting to teach robots new skills directly via brain signals.
Robotic surrogates that offer paralyzed people the freedom to explore their environment, manipulate objects or simply fetch things has been the holy grail of BCI research for a long time.
Dr Rao`s team began by programming a humanoid robot with simple behaviors which users could then select with a wearable electroencephalogram (EEG) cap that picked up their brain activity.
The brain generates what is known as a P300, or P3, signal involuntarily, each time it recognizes an object. This signal is caused by millions of neurons firing together in a synchronized fashion.
This has been used by many researchers worldwide to create BCI-based applications that allow users to spell a word, identify images, select buttons in a virtual environment and more recently, even play in an orchestra or send a Twitter message.
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