If you've ever felt the need an extra pair of arms, it's a reality that could very well be in our future.
Researchers at the Imperial College London have built a robot that can paint a picture for you by simply tracking your eye movements.
"Augmentation of the human body with an extra pair of limbs is technically feasible in terms of the robotics end of things, so we can mechanically attach these types of limbs, but the challenge is if you're controlling a third arm, you want it to be natural, seamless and you don't want to think about it," said Aldo Faisal, who has developed the robot.
"We're talking really about how can we augment, extend the human body with additional limbs that are useful in daily life."
The robot uses an eye-tracker that follows a person's eye movements, which include fixed gazes or a series of blinks, which is then fed to the robotic arm as instructions to help select where to move the paint brush on the page, but also which colors to select.
Faisal explained that the technology basically decodes the movements of a person to determine the intention, and the robotic program does it so well currently, that it is able to paint a picture.
Even though the resulting picture isn't exactly a Picasso and the tech is still in its very early stages, it does prove that the robot could be altered enough for other purposes - like an additional, augmented limb.
You can check out the robot in action below:
Via New Scientist
