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Humans Use Mental Power For Turtle Slavery

Mind-controlled turtles? Yes, humans now use brain-to-computer interfaces (BCI's) and computer–to–brain interfaces (CBI’s) to tell turtles what to do.

The system works like this: a camera is attached to a turtle’s shell providing a live feed to a human. When the human operator thinks of a direction to move in– left, right, or to stay put– the thought is received by a computer the human wears, which recognizes the directions as electroencephalography (EEG) signals. The wearable computer then transmits the command over Wi–Fi to a receiver, also mounted atop the turtle’s shell.

This receiver activates a small blind attached to the front of the shell. This blind can move from left to right. Whichever direction the human decides for the turtle to swim, the blind will move to the opposite side. For instance, when the human thinks left, the blind will move to the right. The turtle’s instinct kicks in, telling it to swim to the left to get around the perceived obstacle.

The new technology was put to the test with three obstacle courses, one indoors and two outdoors. The decked–out turtle navigated all three successfully, moving over grass and gravel while dodging trees, with his human controller sitting three miles away.

Turtles were chosen for the experiment in part due to their high cognitive ability but mostly because they display very strong instinctual escape behavior. They predictably avoid obstacles and naturally gravitate towards light, which to them represents open space.

Of course, science fiction writers have foreseen this day. Robert Silverberg, writing in his 1969 novel The Man in the Maze, describes beings who can accomplish this feat.

“We’re only beginning to understand this, and of course I don’t have much of the inside information myself, but as I piece it together it seems that these beings make use of lower life-forms, turning them essentially into radio-controlled robots. They’ll use anything with limbs and mobility. They started with certain animals of their own planet, a small dolphin-like form perhaps on the threshold of intelligence, and worked through them to achieve a space drive. Then they got to neighboring planets—land planets— and took control of pseudoprimates, protochimps of some kind. They look for fingers. Manual dexterity counts a great deal with them. At present their sphere of influence covers some eighty light-years and appears to be spreading at an exponential rate.”
(Read more about remote-control slavery)

Via BGR.

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