We’ve heard about people controlling drones with their minds before, but Arizona State University is taking it to the next level with coordinated swarms of mind-controlled machines.
Panagiotis Artemiadis, the assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and director of the Human-Oriented Robotics and Control Lab, developed a system that allows a pilot to control a swarm of up to four robots with his or her mind while watching the machines on a screen.
Along with furthering research about brain-computer interaction, this also has a very practical implementation for security drones: instead of controlling an individual machine with a joystick, an operator can track and control entire squads of drones, including flying units and ground units that can be used for charging.
“If you want to swarm around an area and guard that area, you cannot do that,” said Artemiadis.
The pilot wears an electroencephalogram cap studded with 128 electrodes. Instead of controlling the drones with physical movements, which would make operating more than one machine difficult, they simply imagine what the drones should do.
The skull cap has to be carefully calibrated to each pilot, and users are instructed to use breathing exercises or mental imagery – imagining closing their hand into a fist, for example – in order to concentrate and control the drones most effectively.
Meanwhile, the researchers can view the pilot’s brain activity. “Our goal is to decode that activity to control variables for the robots,” said Artemiadis.
The next step is to refine the process and expand it, including the possibility for multiple people to work together to control larger groups of drones.