Chinese Researchers Demonstrate a Drone Controlled by Brain Waves

Posted by icarus on 01 Sep 2012 / 1 Comment

These Chinese researchers only used a quadcopter but watching the video above and you’ll see … it certainly appears to be working. This technology would presumably work on any other machine or military equipment. I can think of some great uses for this, but this is pretty wow.

You know the military wants to get their hands all over this technology. They can already take photos, direct motion of these devices and it works with video. The future is now.

Wired has the story HERE:

Researchers at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, have posted a YouTube video demonstrating a mind-controlled quadcopter drone. By wearing an EEG (emotiv electroencephalography) headset, Zhejiang’s researchers claim they can pilot a quadcopter by thinking “left hard” to take off or land, “left” to rotate the quadcopter clockwise, “right” to fly forward and “push” to fly up.

A user who clenches while wearing the headset will steer the quadcopter downward, while blinking will shoot photos from the on-drone camera. The EEG headset sends commands via Bluetooth to a laptop, which then sends them to the quadcopter by way of a Wi-Fi connection. The quadcopter also streams its view back to the laptop over Wi-Fi, to give its pilots a better view and more precise control.

The New Scientist gives more detail HERE:

Their system relies on the commercially available Emotiv electroencephalography (EEG) headset to interpret brain activity as commands for the quadcopter. Commands are relayed first by Bluetooth to a laptop, then by wireless to the hovering aircraft.

The quadcopter’s range of motion is limited by the brain activity that the EEG can pick up. A user can move the flyer forward by thinking “right”, fly up by thinking “push”, and turn clockwise by thinking “left”. Thinking “left hard” tells the quadcopter to take off from the ground. Clenched teeth and blinking both produce a brain signal that the EEG can read, commanding the flyer to descend or to take a picture using the on-board camera, respectively. By default, that camera sends a stream of video back to the laptop, and the user can capture a still of any scene they choose by blinking four times. The system is due to be presented next month at the Ubiquitous Computing Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.