Brain-controlled drone: It's just what you think

2 hrs.

John Roach

A quadcopter drone controlled by thought commands has taken to the skies at?Zhejiang University?in China. The prototype, called FlyingBuddy2, showcases the future of hands-free interaction that could allow people to pilot everything from remote-controlled toys to fighter jets with their brains.

To work, the pilot wears an emotiv electroencephalography (EEG) headset that interprets brain activity as commands that are routed to a laptop via Bluetooth and then to the drone over Wi-Fi.?

Think ?left hard? and the drone will take off or land. ?Left lightly? causes the drone to rotate; ?right? flies it forward, and ?push? to fly up. Clenching teeth commands the drone to fly down and blinking activates the drone?s camera to make a picture.

The researchers present the drone as a way to provide people with limited mobility new means to interact with their world. The drone could be useful, for example, to help a person in a wheelchair gain a bird's-eye view of flowers in a tree.

As showcased in the video below, the drone can also fulfill the urge to game, pitting mind control against a joystick. As expected, in the filmed battle, mind control wins.

The researchers will present their work on FlyingBuddy2 at the International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing this week in Pittsburgh.

? via Wired, Discovery News, New Scientist?

John Roach is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/brain-controlled-drone-its-just-what-you-think-980685

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