Brilliant Ten winner Yoky Matsuoka chats about the potential applications for her ground-breaking robotics research

Yoky Matsuoka, the director of the Neurobotics Laboratory at the University of Washington, and one of the honorees in our most recent class of the Brilliant Ten, took some time to chat with Talking Robots about her work in particular, and the future of robotics in general. One of Matsuoka's many projects involves building an anatomically-correct mechanical hand—see the video above of the finger in action—and she also has big ideas about brain-machine interfaces, tele-manipulation and robots in the home.

It's also interesting to hear her recount the responses of patients who could benefit from the advanced prosthetics and other devices she's developing, and listen to her thoughts on how these technologies should be used to help people, and not necessarily enhance the abilities of otherwise healthy individuals.

Via Robots.net

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3 Comments

video's "no longer available" :(

..and now it's back. cool! it's neat to see all the little tendons and how they work. It's amazing that each of our fingers has such a complex control system, probably even more robust than the robotic one.

This is so cool! I think the last statement best describes what all our attitudes about our advanced technologies should be "these technologies should be used to help people, and not necessarily enhance the abilities of otherwise healthy individuals."
Oh how magnificent life could be for people in need with these new robotics.


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