Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan a person's brain when they thought about making a "rock", "paper", and "scissors" shape with their hands, then mapping the scans to robot hand actions, researchers could effectively control the metal grabber just by their mind alone.
Though the scientists say they need "several breakthroughs in related technologies, including those for brain scanning hardware, before this type of non-invasive systems will be used in daily life", this provides hope for amputees to someday have a mechanical limb that works as well as their original one.
So, seeing as both this and the technology for growing back human limbs is quite a while's off, which would you rather have? Would you like a robot arm that's 10x stronger than normal, or a soft mushy arm that won't make babies cry?
Robot hand controlled by thought alone [New Scientist via i4u]