Suck It, World, The U.S. Is Working On Mind-Controlled Drones

Dan Regester10 years ago

The future of both modern warfare and sorority recruitment videos is upon us.

Arizona State has their own Professor Xavier who is currently working on robotic combat that would intermingle with the human brain. Panagiotis Artemiadis runs ASU’s Human-Oriented Robotics and Control Lab, and was just granted $860,000 from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and U.S. Air Force to develop mind-controlled drones. Seriously.

From Star and Stripes:

“Ten or 20 years from now, instead of having big expensive aircraft or drones, you can have hundreds or thousands of inexpensive ones you deploy in an area,” Artemiadis said. “Even if you lose half of them, you can still achieve your goals.”

And those drones can be controlled, at least in part, with the human mind, he said. The pilot wears what looks like a high-tech swimmer’s cap, equipped with 128 electrodes that detect brainwaves. The electrodes identify where thoughts originate in the brain and determine the pilot’s intended commands, and then those commands are communicated to the robots via Bluetooth.

A pilot can instruct a cluster of flying drones or terrestrial vehicles to move in a certain direction, spread out over a larger area, or circle around a specific target. To date, one subject has been able to control as many as four drones inside of the lab, Artemiadis said.

Just throw on a swimmer’s cap and bring down hellfire to all that stand in your way? Holy shit, this is incredible. It sounds like one of the lies Kim Jong Un tells the people of North Korea. “I started driving at 3, I have no use for bathrooms, and I can shoot a missile straight up my enemy’s p-hole using nothing but deep concentration.”

There’s clearly some problems with this type of revolutionary technology that’ll come about thanks to our primitive heads. Some moderately attractive female officer or airwomen walks by at any given moment, the guy driving the MQ-1 Predator’s attention shifts, and say goodnight to the mission at hand. That drone is falling victim to “dat ass” 100 times out of 100. But I’m sure Panagiotis — all-time great name, by the way — is figuring out how to counteract the complex intricacies of the male mind as we speak..

[via Star and Stripes]

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