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posted by hubie on Wednesday February 01 2023, @10:09AM   Printer-friendly
from the ethernet-over-spinal-cord dept.

Unused bandwidth in neurons can be tapped to control extra limbs:

What could you do with an extra limb? Consider a surgeon performing a delicate operation, one that needs her expertise and steady hands—all three of them. As her two biological hands manipulate surgical instruments, a third robotic limb that's attached to her torso plays a supporting role. Or picture a construction worker who is thankful for his extra robotic hand as it braces the heavy beam he's fastening into place with his other two hands. Imagine wearing an exoskeleton that would let you handle multiple objects simultaneously, like Spiderman's Dr. Octopus. Or contemplate the out-there music a composer could write for a pianist who has 12 fingers to spread across the keyboard.

Such scenarios may seem like science fiction, but recent progress in robotics and neuroscience makes extra robotic limbs conceivable with today's technology. Our research groups at Imperial College London and the University of Freiburg, in Germany, together with partners in the European project NIMA, are now working to figure out whether such augmentation can be realized in practice to extend human abilities. The main questions we're tackling involve both neuroscience and neurotechnology: Is the human brain capable of controlling additional body parts as effectively as it controls biological parts? And if so, what neural signals can be used for this control?

[...] Two practical questions stand out: Can we achieve neural control of extra robotic limbs concurrently with natural movement, and can the system work without the user's exclusive concentration? If the answer to either of these questions is no, we won't have a practical technology, but we'll still have an interesting new tool for research into the neuroscience of motor control. If the answer to both questions is yes, we may be ready to enter a new era of human augmentation. For now, our (biological) fingers are crossed.


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  • (Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday February 01 2023, @02:04PM (2 children)

    by aafcac (17646) on Wednesday February 01 2023, @02:04PM (#1289635)

    Part of it is finding a good place for more arms. And part of it is that many people already have trouble using the ones they've got in a coordinated way.

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  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday February 01 2023, @02:23PM (1 child)

    by looorg (578) on Wednesday February 01 2023, @02:23PM (#1289640)

    That shouldn't be to much of an issue. Look at all those images of various Indian deities, they have arms all over. Usually they attach a few extras in the same place as normal arms go (over or under) and the rest appear to be attached to the back like some kind of spiderlegs/arms. I guess it will be harder to sleep on your back then if you can't unattach them so you'll be sleeping on your side or stomach or you can perhaps use a few of the arms to be "awake" to hang around like some monkey while the rest of you sleep. So if they can just attach them I'm sure there is a away. Would I want them? No. As noted I think two are working out quite good as it is. I don't see a need for a third one.

    Perhaps if we attached third arms to babies they can learn to use it "normally" when they grow up but to attach them to adults might just be weird and wonky.

    • (Score: 2) by aafcac on Wednesday February 01 2023, @05:49PM

      by aafcac (17646) on Wednesday February 01 2023, @05:49PM (#1289680)

      animals that have more than 4 limbs tend to have no endoskeleton for a reason. It's a lot harder to attach additional arms if you have to worry about connecting them in to the central nervous system or the bone structure of a skeleton. I'd imagine that they would probably be able to attach something at the hips, but more than that would have to either be pretty small, or awkwardly positioned.