Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh implanted electrode arrays in the touch-processing region of the brain of a man paralyzed from the neck down, then used them to deliver electrical stimulation patterns that felt like pressure on his hand.
Combining that artificial touch feedback with a robotic arm he controlled with his thoughts, he completed a grasp-and-transfer task in a median of about 10.2 seconds, down from roughly 20.9 seconds using vision alone, cutting the time it took him to grasp and move an object roughly in half.
The stimulation produced a sensation of pressure rather than fully natural touch, and the result comes from one participant who already had electrodes in place, so it is not yet known how well it will generalize to others. Later work from the same research group has since tested the approach in additional participants.
Read the original study
Flesher et al., Science, 2021 · doi.org/10.1126/science.abd0380
Touch, restored by wires, cut the time in half.
Source
- Flesher, S. N., Downey, J. E., Weiss, J. M., Hughes, C. L., Herrera, A. J., Tyler-Kabara, E. C., Boninger, M. L., Collinger, J. L., & Gaunt, R. A. (2021). A brain-computer interface that evokes tactile sensations improves robotic arm control. Science, 372(6544), 831–836. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abd0380