BEN, THE TWO OF US NEED LOOK NO MORE :

The Brain as User Interface (Samuel K. Moore, 8/02, IEEE Sectrum)

Recent experiments have shown that direct control of prosthetic limbs by the brain may be less difficult to achieve than was supposed. In early May, neuroscientist John Chapin and his colleagues at a Brooklyn, N.Y., medical center used a wireless receiver and electrodes implanted in a rat’s brain to steer the rodent anywhere they wanted it to go. About a month later, bioengineer Andrew Schwartz of Arizona State University (Tempe) announced a method to quickly train a small number of cells in a monkey’s brain to accurately control the 3-D movements of a dot on a monitor.

The SUNY effort’s offspring has been popularly dubbed "roborat," and at least in some respects it beats its mechanical cousins. Suppose the need is to remotely guide a small robotic system through collapsed buildings to search for survivors. In pure robotics, this is a tough job, requiring a lightweight, low-power, agile, and controllable system that can circumnavigate obstacles with ease. But remotely guided rats carrying wireless video cameras fit the bill nicely.

There's the basis for a great flick here with a secret agent and his suicide-bombing rat going to Baghdad to get Saddam. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 11, 2002 11:06 PM