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Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons . By Nathan Ahlgrim If we want to – to paraphrase the classic Six Million Dollar Man – rebuild people, rebuild them to be better, stronger, faster, we need more than fancy motors and titanium bones. Robot muscles cannot help a paralyzed person stand, and robot voices cannot restore communication to the voiceless, without some way for the person to control them. Methods of control need not be cutting-edge. The late Dr. Stephen Hawking’s instantly recognizable voice synthesizer was controlled by a single cheek movement , which seems shockingly analog in today’s world. Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) are the emerging technology that promise to bypass all external input and allow robotic devices to communicate directly with the brain. Dr. Chethan Pandarinath, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, discussed the good and bad of this technology in March’s The Future Now NEEDs seminar:  " To Be Implanted a...

By Timothy Brown and Margaret Thompson Timothy Brown is a doctoral student and research assistant at the University of Washington (UW). He works with the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering's ( CSNE ) Neuroethics Trust, where he explores the broader moral and societal implications of neural engineering and neural technology use. Through the CSNE’s support, he is also embedded in the UW's  BioRobotics Lab , where he investigates issues of autonomy and agency that arise for people with motor disorders who use next-generation, neurally-controlled deep-brain stimulators to manage their symptoms.  Margaret Thompson is a doctoral student in the BioRobotics Laboratory in the Electrical Engineering department at University of Washington, Seattle; she is also president of the Student Leadership Council at the CSNE. She received her Master’s in Electrical Engineering from University of Washington in 2016 and her Bachelor’s in Engineering from Harve...