Vancouver-based industrial design firm Woke Studio was centre-stage last week when Elon Musk provided a progress update on Neuralink, a company he co-founded in 2016.
Neuralink aims to implant wireless brain-computer interfaces that include thousands of electrodes in the brain to help cure neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s, dementia and spinal cord injuries and ultimately fuse humankind with artificial intelligence.
While Neuralink engineers and scientists are responsible for the underlying technology that connects humans and computers, Woke designed the brain surgeon robot as well as the behind-the-ear communication piece.
Woke Studios was enlisted to collaborate with Neuralink technologists on a machine that could conduct an extraordinarily complex and high-risk surgical procedure: to implant a tiny ‘pill’ and neural threads safely into the brain.
The ultra-high bandwidth threads themselves are a fraction of the size of a human hair and must be inserted perfectly to receive thousands of data signals simultaneously from the neurons of the brain.
During last week’s demonstration Elon Musk debuted a working demo of his latest technology moonshot with a pig named Gertrude that had a prototype implant in its brain.
Check out Musk’s Neuralink progress update below and read more about the design of the Neuralink surgical robot on Dexigner.