After months of hard work, we were about to test the idea that we could reliably
translate the raw electrical activity in a living beings brain-Belles mere thoughts-into signals that could direct the actions of a robot. We had assembled a multijointed robot arm in this room, away from Belles view, which she would control for the first time. As soon as Belles brain sensed a lit spot on the panel, electronics in the box running two real-time mathematical models would rapidly analyze the tiny action potentials produced by her brain cells. Our lab computer would convert the electrical patterns into instructions that would direct the robot arm. Six hundred miles north, in Cambridge, Mass, a different computer would produce the same actions in another robot arm built by Mandayam A. Srinivasan. If we had done everything correctly, the two robot arms would behave as Belles arm did, at exactly the same time.
Finally the moment came. We randomly switched on lights in front of Belle, and she immediately moved her joystick back and forth to correspond to them. Our robot arm moved similarly to Belles real arm. So did Sriniwlsans. Belle and the robots moved in synchrony (同步), like dancers choreographed (设计舞蹈动作) by the electrical impulses sparking in Belles mind.
In the two years since that day, our labs and several others have advanced neuroscience, computer science and microelectronics to create ways for rats, monkeys and eventually humans to control mechanical and electronic machines purely by thinking through, or imagining, the motions. Our immediate goal is to help a person who has been unable to move by a neurological (神经的) disorder or spinal cord (脊髓) injury, but whose motor codex is spared, to operate a wheelchair or a robotic limb.
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