Control by thought: new neuralink demonstrations always so impressive

Point his weapon on an enemy at a glance, imagine his kart take a tight turn so that he performs quickly, or even a part of Pierre-Feuille-Cisseaux using a virtual hand: with Neuralink, Musk takes a big step towards so far unexpected advances. During the last Neuralink conference, spectators were particularly surprised by the results displayed by the brain implant.

I think so I move

The demonstration begins with a patient, Noland Arbaugh, a name far from unknown, since he was the first human to receive the Neuralink implant. Become quadriplegic after a spinal cord injury, he is now moving a cursor on a screen to progress on Webgridgame designed by the American start-up to feed patient tests.

The team of Musk is formal, here there is no question of eye-tracking technology or any sensors: just think about moving. The ultra-intuitive character, according to Sehej Singh, also carrying the system, “beats decades and decades of research on direct neural interfaces.”.

Pilot a kart without your hands

To support the versatility of the device, it is now possible to connect it by USB to all kinds of machines. To support these remarks, the assembly has the opportunity to observe the first 6 patients to be equipped with the chip in a group call, playing simultaneously Mario Kart. To one detail: none of them had a controller in hand.

The experiment continues with two new stakeholders, RJ, paralyzed following a spinal cord injury, and Alex, quadriplegic. Both play Call of Duty, simply visualizing two joysticks.

Launched in 2016, the Neuralink start-up had made the promise only with its brain device, “Telepathy”, the paralyzed patients could control machines by a simple mental gymnastics, potentially overwhelming the daily life of millions of people. Just under 10 years later, 7 volunteers and several hundred million dollars, the promise seems realistic.