Researchers Using Rat-Robot Hybrid to Design Better Brain Machine Interfaces

IEEE Spectrum: Researchers Using Rat-Robot Hybrid to Design Better Brain Machine Interfaces: "A strange creature, half robot, half rat, has been seen scuttling across a laboratory in Japan. It's RatCar, a rat-vehicle experiment that scientists hope could lead to improved mobility for people with disabilities. Researchers at the University of Tokyo wanted to see whether rats could control a miniature vehicle through the brain signals that move their limbs. They recently presented their project at the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society annual conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
'We wanted to develop a brain-machine interface system aiming for future wheelchairs that paralyzed patients can control only with thought,' says Osamu Fukayama of the university's Medical Engineering and Life Science Laboratory. 'RatCar is a simplified prototype to develop better electrodes, devices, and algorithms for those systems.'"