I cyborg

edited August 2015 in Everything else
Hey so I have a question in regards to Kevin Warwicks book and the experiments he has done and referenced in it. It primarily has to do with the micro electrodes he implanted; has anyone of you done anything similarly to it in an attempt to "plug" in to computers or other such uses? I'm wondering because it seems like there could be so much usefulness.

As a note I'm still reading the book and am on chapter 10.
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  • we've discussed it but the array you need  will run you 4-5 grand and that's just the array. Then you need all the equiptment to make use of it, some fairly extensive surgery that'll require a hell of a doctor since things are so small and also, it's your nerves so you dont want it messed up. We'll get there eventually but currently no one has the resources for something like that. Not yet
  • That's depressing but very understandable. I was hoping one of you might have tried something similar to it. I am really intrigued by the thought of having remote control of objects like that. I have seen the band that works similarly by the way you muscles move but it wouldn't be quite the same thing being on the outside of your body.
  • edited August 2015
    Oh don't get me wrong, im working my ass off to get to that point. But the infrastructure you need in place to be able to do it is either a lot of work, or a lot of money. SO as I build the lab im slowly accumulating the stuff needed but it'll be a while. Maybe a year or two if things go well. So not in essence all that far away, but not anytime soon. Not without serious funding. That's how he managed it, he had university money or a grant of some sort. I'm starting to look a bit into the lithography techniques needed to make the arrays. Te biggest problem is to actually make the photomask you need an electron microscope just because of how small the connections underneath those little electrodes are. In theory if we had all the chemicals we needed and I was done building my vacuum setup we could order the photoresist mask(s) needed to fabricate one of these, get everything into the vacuum chamber and grow the thing but it'd be a huge pain and by the end you'd have an inferior product most likely simply cause it'd be our first crack at it and we haven't spent the shitload it takes develop something like this. Now again im not trying to discourage any of this. I as i've said will try this, just it'll take time. However and this may be even harder but I read recently about a professor at MIT who has devised a way to get signals from amputated limbs but getting the nerves to grow through these square tubes that pick up the signal as it goes through the neuron inside. I haven't looked mush into it, although I may tonight, and it wouldn't be good far as i can tell for a non amputee since that would involve cutting a nerve which is less fun when you lose function temporarily (hopefully) to your still perfectly good limb. SO thats one other option

    EDIT: I was wrong. The arrays are made using a combination of metal deposition, parleyne deposition and partial removal and a disco dicing saw. Which although that last one sounds fun, it's a $30,000+ machine, which if someone had access to one then ya sure we could fairly easily make an array. I say easily, in that it'd be a pain in the ass, but it's do able. So if anyone has access please pipe up! :P
  • Well I'd be game for one. Do you think that having maybe just one and not an array would even do anything of decent worth?
  • If you're just doing one that's actually already a procedure. Totally different animal. In theory doing 4-5 wouldn't be that hard, just 5 tiny electrodes and feed them into a little subdermal implant. Im not much of an electronics guy so someone else would have to do that but the electrodes I might be able to make. There's 2 kinds of nerve implant like this. Epineural and intraneural. One goes around the outside of the nerve bundle, that's epineural. You basically suture the thing either on top of or coiling around a nerve then feed the signal back to your implant. Intraneural is much more invasive and difficult but gives way more accurat results. In that case the electrodes are placed on individual nerves inside the bundle which means cutting the bundle open which is really hard to do properly. Since if you fuck it up that's nerve damage. The array works by sort of jamming it's way into a bunch of neruons and listening to the noise. It's intraneural. Now someone with more medical expertise then me feel free to correct me. Im just going off what i've been reading in papers so im likely to mess something up. But ya, if you wanted like 6 you probably could potentially even in a non operating theater setting, such like the ones we tend to work in. But again it's nerves so i dunno if i'd trust it to anyone other than a trained surgeon. That all said, if you want to design a project based on this I'll happily help where I can
  • I would absolutely love to do something like this I just have no idea where I would even start. I'm lower then a beginner with biology so it's pretty useless but I'm quite good at soldering. My ultimate end goal would hopefully be able to get some kind of mechanical response on electronics maybe in such a way as the EPOC supposidly does.

    I'm very green when it comes to do developing something that would eventually get stuck in me as I don't know enough about what's under the skin in the way of nerves but you explained it very well in the sense that I could figure out what you were talking about.

  • Ya that right there is the reason this hasn't been done yet. We have lots of people on here who WANT to do things but due to a lack of materials or know-how they can't really do much to help expect fund the people who can, and there's a limit to how many of these projects people can do at once. I for one am focused on nanotech atm and it's eating a lot of my budget so something like this can only really be a side project until later. That said if people want to do this I'm sure enough people could find the time to get some work done on it.
  • Absolutely and that would be my hold back is I don't have the funding to get stuff and don't know a lot about the body but I can build. I think it's been noticed I do a lot of idea bouncing on here mainly because I don't have much background in the human body and I know a fair amount of the people here do and will tell me I'm crazy lol.

    Would you be able to just kinda stab one of these into your arm where you nerve would be and do it safely or is that just asking for issues? Maybe a preset depth on a gun to not go to far but far enough like a piercing gun?

    If at some point in my near future do come up with the fundage to start this I certainly will be looking for a bit of input into my own body.

    But right now I have been intrigued by the Bluetooth thread that was started and has me thinking about my sound enhancing/noise canceling ear buds.
  • Ya i've been looking at that thread as well. i like the idea and if it's made small and well enough it could be a cool thing. As to the stabbing, no. doesn't quiet work like that. No guns for the love of all things don't do that. You'll just give yourself nerve damage. One of the projects im working towards is actually a major prosthetic that would be wired into a limb. So when I finally have the setup to make everything i need for that, i'll get back to neural interfaces. But first need to grow carbon nanotubes for the muscles.
  • So your project is based around the same thing only using a different approach?

    I think with the response from you hearing about a gun definitely removes that idea from my head. I would definitely not want to do any damage. To myself seeing how I'm trying to improve and fix what is already damaged (really bad knees).
  • edited August 2015
    Not quiet. It's a really involved project. I want the prosetichic to be indestinguishable from a regular limb. So I'm making it move the way a human limb would. So that means a large amount of neural implantation to make sure i'd be collecting enough data to control the thing in real time and fluidly. Think automale from fullmetal alchemist but less metal and more really high tech meta materials. Probably gonna have a small transdermal connection port for the neural interface and I'd be piggybakcing on some other research on how to get the thing to hold in place on the severed limb. I'm starting with a hand and working up to eventually be able to replace the whole limb, although, that becomes werid since connection and bracing gets annoying when there's nothing to connect to except shoulder. But this project is still in it's infancy. Untill I can make those materials it's dead in the water, hence why im working on what im working on. Vacuum system and nanomaterial fabrication first, crazy robo arm second. 

    I'm also working on non standard proesthics. So instead of helping amputees they're used for regular people. Kinda doc oc style actually only less shitty and bulky and shoulder mounted rather than back. 
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