Three arms are better than two

Not quite Doctor Octopus, but it's a start...

Because two arms just aren’t enough, researchers from the Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratory in Kyoto, Japan, have taught volunteers to control a robotic third arm through a brain-machine interface. Participants in the experiment were challenged to balance a ball on a board using their hands, and pick up a bottle using a robotic third arm. Fifteen subjects took part, and eight of them managed the task successfully.

For now, the robot arm is quite basic: it can only open and close its hand. The brain-machine interface is similarly rudimentary: it’s a cap fitted with electrodes that measures the brain’s electrical signals. Before the test, participants imagined opening and closing the robotic hand, and those brain signals were recorded and turned into an instruction for the robotic arm.

The researchers also noted that success in the task depended heavily on the participants’ ability to multitask. They suggested that operating the extra limb through the brain-machine interface might help users improve their multitasking abilities.

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