[ExI] Scientists Added a Sense of Touch to a Mind-Controlled Robotic Arm

[John Grigg]

"Most people probably underestimate how much our sense of touch helps us
navigate the world around us. New research has made it crystal clear after
a robotic arm with the ability to feel was able to halve the time it took
for the user to complete tasks.

In recent years, rapid advances in both robotics
<https://singularityhub.com/topics/#robotics> and neural interfaces have
brought the dream of bionic limbs (like the one sported by Luke Skywalker
in the *Star Wars* movies) within touching distance. In 2019, researchers
even unveiled a robotic prosthetic arm
<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/24/at-last-feel-again-robotic-hand-user-sense-touch-grapes-eggs#:~:text=A%20man%20who%20lost%20his,it%20were%20his%20own%20limb.>
with a sense of touch that the user could control with their thoughts alone.

But so far, these devices have typically relied on connecting to nerves and
muscles in the patient’s residual upper arm. That has meant the devices
don’t work for those who have been paralyzed or whose injuries have caused
too much damage to those tissues.

That may be about to change, though. For the first time, researchers have
allowed a patient to control a robotic arm using a direct connection to
their brain while simultaneously receiving sensory information from the
device. And by closing the loop, the patient was able to complete tasks in
half the time compared to controlling the arm without any feedback.

“The control is so intuitive that I’m basically just thinking about things
as if I were moving my own arm,” patient Nathan Copeland, who has been
working with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh for six years, told
*NPR*
<https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/05/20/998725924/a-sense-of-touch-boosts-speed-accuracy-of-mind-controlled-robotic-arm>
*.*

The results, reported in *Science*
<https://science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.abd0380>*,* build
on previous work from the same team that showed they could use implants in
Copeland’s somatosensory cortex to trigger sensations localized to regions
of his hand, despite him having lost feeling and control thanks to a spinal
cord injury.

The 28-year-old had also previously controlled an external robotic arm
using a neural interface wired up to his motor cortex, but in the latest
experiment the researchers combined the two strands of research, with
impressive results."
https://singularityhub.com/2021/05/24/scientists-added-a-sense-of-touch-to-a-mind-controlled-robotic-arm/
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