The Neualink chip allows you to control smartphones, computers, but also a robotic limb, just with your mind. The device, combined with the robot, could allow paralyzed people to carry out daily tasks independently.
Not just chips. Now Neuralink is ready to test the first brain implant with a robotic arm. The company has received approval to begin a feasibility test. In a post on an experimental assistance robotic arm. This is an important first step towards restoring not only digital freedom, but also of physical freedom. More information will be available soon, but the CONVOY study will allow cross-enrollment of participants from the ongoing PRIME study.”
Elon Musk’s company will now have to evaluate the security of his wireless brain-computer interface and of surgical robot. The brain-computer interface (BCIs) that control robotic arms could allow paralyzed people to carry out simple daily tasks without assistance.
Patient zero who received the first chip
Neuralink has been working on Telepathy since 2016, the first human trials were announced in December 2022. The waiting list opened in September 2023 to find the first 11 patients and verify the safety and effectiveness of the chip.
Patient zero, Noland Arbaugh, underwent surgery in January 2024. The 29-year-old man was left paralyzed from the shoulder down after a underwater accident. Neuralink’s device allowed him to play video games, surf the Internet, post on social media and move a cursor on his laptop. “Months have passed since they implanted Telepaty in me and for now it’s going well,” he told Fanpage.it. “I feel like I’ve done more in the last few months than I have in all the previous thirty years.”
The operation was a success although a few weeks after the operation the implant started to give rise to problems. Neuralink in a blog post explained that the wires retractedreducing the bits per second. Arbaugh has in fact lost speed and precision with his cursor control. The team then modified the chips and recovered most of the functionality. Arbaugh was the first but not the only one. In fact, the chip was also successfully implanted in a second patient in August.
What are Elon Musk’s goals
Telepathy allows you to control a smartphone, computer or a robotic limb, only with thought. The device is based on brain-computer interface (BCI), the brain-computer interface that allows communication between brain activity and a any other external device. The trial was approved in May 2023 by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for “people with tetraplegia due to cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).”
The goal of Neuralink is in fact “to create a neuronal interface for the restoration of autonomy of those who have today unmet medical needs”. Not only that. This is just the first step. In fact, Elon Musk’s great dream is to develop a device capable of “unlocking human potential”, physical and mental abilities until reaching “symbiosis with artificial intelligence”.
