Quadcopter Guided By Thought — Accurately 79
ananyo writes "A toy quadcopter can be steered through an obstacle course by thought alone. The aircraft's pilot operates it remotely using a cap of electrodes to detect brainwaves that are translated into commands. Ultimately, the developers of the mind-controlled copter hope to adapt their technology for directing artificial robotic limbs and other medical devices."
From the paper (PDF) abstract: "... we report a novel experiment of BCI controlling a robotic quadcopter in three-dimensional (3D) physical space using noninvasive scalp electroencephalogram (EEG) in human subjects. We then quantify the performance of this system using metrics suitable for asynchronous BCI. Lastly, we examine the impact that the operation of a real world device has on subjects’ control in comparison to a 2D virtual cursor task. Approach. ... Individual subjects were able to accurately acquire up to 90.5% of all valid targets presented while traveling at an average straight-line speed of 0.69 m s^(1)."
This also appears to be the first time a Brain-Computer Interface was used to operate a flying device in 3D space. Also, there are several additional videos showing people operating the quadcopter.
Better idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
Screw the drone, hook him up to Quake 3 and lets see him pull off some sweet strafejumps...that'll be a better benchmark :D
Also i'm thinking that perhaps they should focus more on feedback. If visual feedback is the only thing he gets, especially with the delay, it'll take him a lot longer than if he had say, rumblepack belts attached to him which gave feedback on direction, tilt, speed etc.