Telekinesis, the paranormal superpower of being able to move an object by thought alone, has made significant progress with advances in neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Overview of some baffling achievements.
Turn on your computer remotely, write a tweet or text message without pressing a single key on your phone or control connected objects without even moving your lips, a fantasy? Not so sure. Unveiled last April, the AlterEgo helmet developed by MIT scientists is one of the latest illustrations of progress in the world of telekinesis. The scientists at the prestigious American University have indeed developed a helmet capable of understanding our inner voice! Thanks to electrodes and a machine learning system, the helmet translates the internal verbalization and transmits the information to carry out actions.
Man-machine interfaces
And the sci-fi scenario does not stop there. This helmet is an example of a human-machine interface (ICM), a concept that dates back to 1973 and whose first tests in humans date back to the 1990s. In France, French teams are working on a free software “OpenViBE” for applications in the field of health and multimedia. The US military and major companies like Google or Facebook are also developing brain-machine interface projects in the wake of research around virtual reality and AI. Facebook, through its laboratory Building 8 is also looking at a technology that allows people to communicate with other people without talking. In another register Neuralink, the project carried by the technophile entrepreneur Elon Musk, is to connect the brains to the machines. Finally, researchers from EPFL and Nissan are working on a prototype brain-vehicle technology capable of reading the cerebral signals of drivers before their actions, to transmit them to vehicles.
If you can not move real objects and send your coworker’s chair is flying, the control of connected objects via a more and more advanced technology seems to be coming true … maybe Will soon be able to control giant robots by the thought like in the movie Pacific Rim Uprising?
