How could a collaboration between U.S. and Japanese scientist end up? Further than one may think, as Dr. Miguel Nicolelis from Duke University Medical Center announced they managed to successfully control a humanoid robot over the internet, by simply using the brain activity of a rhesus monkey.

Together with researchers from the Japan Science and Technology Agency, American scientists implanted the monkey named Idoya with electrodes and conducted an experiment aimed at helping paralyzed people walk again by using their thoughts to control an exoskeleton attached to their body.

Neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis described the process, saying that they used a monkey that had been trained to walk on a treadmill and recorded its brain activity pattern generated during the locomotion process, while at the same time, it generated signals that were also controlling a humanoid robot in Japan.

According to the team of researchers, the signals have been successfully decoded and could revolutionize the medicine world by possibly restoring motor functions to paralyzed patients, but there is still a lot of work to be done before the idea could become reality, and one of the challenges is to increase the complexity of the signals.

But what is the most important is that if the experiment will materialize in the future, the patient will not feel uncomfortable or find it hard to use. Nicolelis explained, according to Computerworld: “It normally takes 250 milliseconds fore the brain to create a signal for the leg to move. In that same time interval, we were able to send the signal to Japan and get a video loop back showing the robot responding to the thoughts… The patient wouldn’t notice the time lag. It would feel like moving your own leg.”

The project has been under development for 10 years, and predictions have it that there will have to pass 10 or maybe 15 years more before the technology will become available. But it certainly revolutionizes scientific world for the time being, and maybe 10 years from now, paralyzed patients will benefit from computer chip implants to help them take control over their life again.