Researchers led by Bin He at the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Engineering in Medicine have managed to guide a remote control helicopter through an obstacle course using only the power of thought.
There has been much research in recent years in developing tools that can monitor the human brain in ways so that a person can send messages just by thinking. Much of this research has been aimed at helping disabled people such as those with prosthetic limbs, being able to make a prosthetic arm grasp an object, just by the person thinking about performing that action. The technology is not limited to such applications, however, with developers already looking towards integrating it with video games, and Samsung are reportedly investigating using such technology to control a tablet computer.
To control this helicopter for research published in the Journal of Neural Engineering, the “driver” wears a non-invasive “cap” to capture brain electrical activity, with a computer then trained to recognise person-specific maps of electrical patterns in an electroencephalograph. Whilst much of the brain’s electrical activity is still indecipherable, thoughts about actions and movement are relatively stable and possible for computers to recognise.
In this case, for the helicopter to turn right, the “driver” had to think about clenching his right hand into a fist, which produced an electrical signature that was recognised by the electroencephalograph, and then translated into a WiFi signal to the helicopters engines to turn right. Making a fist with both hands moves the helicopter down.
These electrical maps are still not perfect, but the resolution is improving rapidly as new technologies emerge, and participants already managed to manoeuvre the helicopter successfully around the obstacle course 90% of the time.
