As Idoya walked, CB walked at exactly the same pace. Recordings from Idoya’s brain revealed that her neurons fired each time she took a step and each time the robot took a step.
“It’s walking!” Dr. Nicolelis said. “That’s one small step for a robot and one giant leap for a primate.”
The signals from Idoya’s brain sent to the robot, and the video of the robot sent back to Idoya, were relayed in less than a quarter of a second, he said. That was so fast that the robot’s movements meshed with the monkey’s experience.
An hour into the experiment, the researchers pulled a trick on Idoya. They stopped her treadmill. Everyone held their breath. What would Idoya do?
“Her eyes remained focused like crazy on CB’s legs,” Dr. Nicolelis said.
She got treats galore. The robot kept walking. And the researchers were jubilant.
Cool! Probably will eventually lead to a superhuman robot army someday, but cool!
