Researchers in Japan and the U.S. have successfully transmitted the brain waves of a monkey half way around the world over the Internet to a robot that performed the correct movement.

The U.S. researchers at Duke University in North Carolina pinned down correlated patterns between a monkey’s brain nerve signals and leg movements. The monkey was trained to walk upright on a treadmill, its brain studded with electrodes to read the signals.

The signals were fed into a humanoid robot that walked in response to the signals.

“There may come an era when you could move a remotely located robot as if it is yourself and play tennis with it,” said Mitsuo Kawato, research director of a Japan Science and Technology Agency research institute in Seika, Kyoto Prefecture.

Wouldn’t playing tennis with yourself result in endless rallies?