Haven’t you ever felt the need for a third arm? Of course, and I can imagine many tasks I would use them for; that is, of course, easier said than done.
People aren’t used to having three arms; if we grew another one, we probably wouldn’t know what to do with it. There are already many projects to add a robot arm to a person, but unless we can control them with our own natural hands, it won’t do much good.
This was the goal of the researchers at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute in Kyoto, Japan. His robot arm really works like a third hand, thanks to its ability to interpret signals from our brain.
A third robot arm that allows us to do two things at once.
The really important thing is that it allows us to do two things at once. We can do one task with the natural arms and start another with the artificial arm at the same time; this is very important because we do not have to concentrate exclusively on the third arm, the failure of many of these developments.
In the tests, the researchers found out that eight of the 15 volunteers could use the robot arm as their own. To this end, the participants received two electrodes on their heads that capture brain activity; the arm is calibrated to capture the differences in brain patterns when the volunteer is thinking of picking up and releasing a bottle.
From then on, they had to perform two actions simultaneously; while moving a ball on a tray with their two natural hands, they had to pick up a bottle with their robot hand and drop it. The success rate of the test is important, but for the researchers, it is more important than the participants who failed because they could not control the arm, but because they could not concentrate on two tasks simultaneously. No, we don’t know if they were men (simple joke).
Therefore, people who are better at multitasking will make better use of this arm; something that makes sense because the arm does not move by itself.
This type of robot arm can be useful not only for those who do several things at once, but also for people who have lost some of their arms. In addition, it is also suitable for use in factories to lift heavy objects or a hand when we need it, never better said.