Researchers at the University of Minnesota have revealed a drone that can be controlled merely by thought. Published in the Journal of Neuro Engineering, the project has implications in everything from unmanned vehicles to paraplegic mobility.
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 Electro-encephalogram (EEG). EEGs place an array of electrodes over a person’s head in a totally non-invasive way and pick up on electrical activity in the brain. Clusters of activity, like thinking about making a fist with a right hand, generate 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.
Researcher Bin He, a professor of bio-medical engineering at the University of Michigan says that previously, research showed that subjects could control a virtual helicopter with their thoughts. The latest demo using a real, live helicopter is just another step towards more practical applications.
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