It sounds like the stuff of science fiction - but a company in Utah has already implanted brain chips in dozens of patients. Blackrock Neurotech, based in Salt Lake City, has the grand ambition of curing physical paralysis, blindness, deafness and depression. The chip -- known as NeuroPort Array -- allow people to control robotic arms and wheelchairs, play video games and even feel sensations. It works by using nearly 100 microneedles that attach to the brain and read electrical signals produced by someone's thoughts. More than three dozen people have so far received it.

A paralyzed man has become the first human to have electrodes implanted in his brain's sensory cortex, allowing him to'feel' his robotic arm as it manipulates various objects. Sensory input is crucial in understanding how to hold an object or if its in danger of slipping. In a series of tests, Copeland was tasked with picking up cylinders, spheres and cubes and placing them on a box. No longer required just to rely on sight, Nathan Copeland can complete tasks in about half the time it used to take. With stimulation of his sensory cortex, Copeland was able to pick up a glass of water, pour it into another cup and casually place it down in under 24 seconds.

President Barack Obama bumped fists with Nathan Copeland during a tour of innovation projects at the White House Frontiers Conference at the University of Pittsburgh in 2016. President Barack Obama bumped fists with Nathan Copeland during a tour of innovation projects at the White House Frontiers Conference at the University of Pittsburgh in 2016. A robotic arm with a sense of touch has allowed a man who is paralyzed to quickly perform tasks like pouring water from one cup into another. The robotic arm provides tactile feedback directly to the man's brain as he uses his thoughts to control the device, a team reports Thursday in the journal Science. Previous versions of the arm required the participant, Nathan Copeland, to guide the arm using vision alone.

Rather than leading to the violent downfall of humankind, artificial intelligence is helping people around the world do their jobs, including doctors who diagnose sepsis in patients and scientists who track endangered animals in the wild, experts said Thursday (Oct. Advancements in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) haven't always been met with enthusiasm. Famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking warned on several occasions that a fully developed AI could destroy the human race, and Hollywood sci-fi movies are rife with fierce robots battling humans for control. But at yesterday's conference -- attended by the country's leading researchers, innovators, entrepreneurs and students -- scientists explained how newly developed AI is accelerating research and improving lives. Here is a look at five AI inventions that are already redefining technology.

Barack Obama might be the most powerful man in the world, but at heart he's just a science nerd - as he proved while touring the White House Frontiers Conference Thursday. The commander-in-geek was clearly in his element as he stepped off Air Force One in Pittburgh and headed to the event, which showcases thrilling innovations in tech. There, a clearly delighted President fist-bumped a paralyzed man who uses a mind-controlled robotic hand, goofed around with a baby in a Nasa T-shirt and got a taste of astronaut life. The President beamed as he took docked a virtual shuttle into the International Space Station on a Boeing Starliner Flight Simulator that had been installed at the event, held in Carnegie Mellon University. 'Your ride is here, baby,' Obama said after docking the simulator on the International Space Station.

Robert Gaunt tests Nathan Copeland's ability to detect touch by tapping fingers on a robotic hand. Robert Gaunt tests Nathan Copeland's ability to detect touch by tapping fingers on a robotic hand. Twelve years ago, a car wreck took away Nathan Copeland's ability to control his hands or sense what his fingers were touching. A few months ago, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center gave Copeland a new way to reach out and feel the world around him. It's a mind-controlled robotic arm that has pressure sensors in each fingertip that send signals directly to Copeland's brain.

When researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center blindfolded a paralyzed man whose was linked to a robotic hand, he could successfully identify which fingers were being touched 84 percent of the time. Mind-controlled robot arms can now generate feelings of touch, based on new research from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The study, published today in Science Translational Medicine, represents a first for brain-computer interfaces and fulfills a major stage in creating robotic prosthetic arms for tetraplegics that can hold objects. "One of the reasons providing sensation is really important is when you reach out to pick something up, it's that sense of touch that allows you to hold the object properly," Robert Gaunt, the project's leader and a physical medicine and rehabilitation researcher at Pitt, told the NewsHour. That's because to touch an object like an apple, your brain requires two things: movement and feeling.

A paralysed man has regained a sense of touch after 10 years while using a mind-controlled robotic hand. In breakthrough tests, 28-year-old Nathan Copeland was able to feel subtle pressure in his own fingers when the artificial ones are touched. The world first experiment is an early step in the quest to create prosthetics that can feel, US researchers claim. A brain chip, called the Brain Computer Interface (BCI), has helped restore feeling to a patient with paralysed hands, a new study claims. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh studied the sensations felt by a 28-year-old man with tetraplegia from a spinal cord injury.