When you think of monkey-robot hybrids, you usually think of cute little creatures like this:

via www.gadgets-weblog.com

No longer.

Monkeys with sensors implanted in their brains have learned to control a robot arm with their thoughts, using it to feed themselves with fruit and marshmallows the tattered remains of the scientists foolish enough to embark on this research.

More details on the website of the academic journal Nature .

The initial training period was assisted by corrective signals generated by the BMI control program, but the monkeys quickly learned how to generate the brain activity that would produce the desired robot motions without any assistance.

Without any assitance.  But don't worry, I'm sure there's no possibility of this going awry, since we won't equip the monkey-robots with anything dangerous.

Using grids of fine electrodes implanted in the primary motor cortex of monkeys, they trained the animals to generate patterns of brain activity to control an anthropomorphic robot arm that had a shoulder joint, an elbow joint and a claw-like gripper 'hand'.

Except a claw-like gripper.  It's like a bunch of neuroscientists sniffed solvent while watching The Terminator and Planet of the Apes.

Here is a schematic of the robot-monkey hybrids that will soon become our overlords.

via www.nature.com

That monkey-robot hybrid looks seriously pissed.

For those of you at academic institutions, the full text can found here.