Read Online Inventing Iron Man by E. Paul Zehr - Free Book Online Page B

activity and devices like robot suits or artificial limbs. The next step is determining the feasibility of using that initial command signal—the one from the brain or spinal cord—to power motors and computers directly. This means thinking about what Doc Ock from Spiderman or Professor X / Charles Xavier from X-Men can teach Iron Man about connecting machinery to his nervous system. What would it mean for Tony Stark to engineer the Iron Man armor to be able to use this kind of control? Is it even possible, and, if it is, is it dangerous? To answer this we are going to do a little fast forward and then a rewind!

    Figure 3.3. The “neuromimetic telepresence unit” that Tony uses to interface with his brain and to remotely control the Iron Man suit of armor (
A
), from the graphic novel
War Machine
(2008). Note the circled “neural access port” that is meant to penetrate Tony’s skull. Tony connects to the telepresence unit (and therefore controls the Iron Man suit) from his hospital bed (
B
) from “This Year’s Model” (Invincible Iron Man #290, 1993). Copyright Marvel Comics.
    First, the fast-forward part. What we are focusing on here is the issue of somehow using a direct connection between the nervous system and a robotic device. This kind of connection was shown in Iron Man in its most extreme form back in March and April 1993 in “This Year’s Model” (Iron Man #290) and “Judgement Day” (Iron Man #291). These stories contain elements of the extended story arc captured in the 2008 Iron Man graphic novel
War Machine
in which Tony Stark had to fake his death. Jim Rhodes has stepped in to become a fill-in “silver” Iron Man (and later became War Machine). Tony then has to use a remote control Iron Man (the NTU-150, but I will call it “robot Iron Man”), which is controlled by a direct connection to his nervous system called a “neuromimetic telepresence unit” (hence the name NTU). This unit basically involves a direct link between activity in Tony Stark’s brain and activity in robot Iron Man. Included in the graphic novel is a detailed description of this telepresence unit.
    The image shown in panel A of figure 3.3 comes from that manual. There is a lot of description in the seven-page pseudomanual printed in the novel! However, for our purposes, the piece I want to key on is the description of the actual headset the user must wear. It is of course called a “user interface headset” so the writers are taking a very literal view of how real scientists actually describe things! Anyway, as written in the manual, the headset “provides a direct electronic control channel” for the operator to use to control the robot Iron Man. This headset interfaces with the operator by “the neural port surgically implanted at the base of the operator’s skull just behind the right ear, transmitting commands and information between the Central Nervous System and the neuromimetic operating system.” The image in panel B shows the headset being interfaced (“jacked in”) to Tony’s brain and comes from “This Year’s Model” (Iron Man #290). In both images, I have circled the key neural link panel. Sounds absolutely like comic book fiction, right? Well, partly it is but it also is very much like an emerging phenomenon generally known as a “brain computer interface.” To explore this for Iron Man, let’s look at the real science behind this concept.
Signals from Ol’ Shellhead’s Head
    Since this section of the chapter is about detecting some information from the brain that is then relayed to robot Iron Man, we need toalso understand how your own nervous system works to produce and regulate movement. That is, where does the signal for movement come from and what does it look like? I am pretty sure that you would agree with me that there are lots of things going on in your brain at