Researchers
at the University of Minnesota today revealed a drone that can be controlled
merely by thought, and that's not even the coolest thing about it. Published in
the Journal of Neuro
Engineering, the project has implications in everything from
unmanned vehicles to paraplegic mobility.The setup here is pretty basic,
futuristic though it seems. The drone is a commercially available four-blade
helicopter--the Parrot AR
quadrotor--which is basically a drone hobbyist's Model T. To
control it, the "pilot" wears a funny hat, the sensing end of an
electroencephalogram (EEG).
EEGs place an array of electrodes over a person's head, in a totally
non-invasive way, then pick up on electrical activity in the brain. Clusters of
activity, like thinking about making a fist with a right hand, generates a
spark in a specific area of the brain. That spark gets translated through a
computer into a quadrotor command ("turn right"). The command is then
beamed to the quadrotor via WiFi.I think that we should have mind controlled
drones because it would be awesome too scare someone. University researchers in
Texas say they are designing a new type of drone – one that could be controlled
simply and only with a soldier’s mind.If successful, the project would allow
soldiers to command future drones in ways beyond simple navigational commands.
While troops would be able to order a drone to “move left” and “move right,” it
would potentially enable them to command the vehicles to travel over specific
geographic installations and send critical data back to their operators.According
to My San Antonio,
the project is currently underway at the University of Texas at San Antonio,
where graduate students recently demonstrated a hovering drone operated via a
cell phone app while one researcher sat – his head covered in sensors – and
focused intently on the unnamed aerial vehicles’ activity.While the goal of
controlling vehicles by way of the mind is still ways off, the hope is that by
studying the brain signals and magnetic waves captured from graduate student
Mauricio Merino, the researchers will be able link the activity to specific
commands that can eventually be received by an advanced drone.
for
further reading http://discover.umn.edu/news/science-technology/brain-computer-interface-allows-mind-control-robots
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