Scientists develop flying drone controlled by thought alone

Researchers from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China developed the copter with a system that relies on the commercially available Emotiv electroencephalography (EEG) headset to interpret brain activity as commands for the quadcopter, New Scientist reported.

The headset uses Bluetooth to connect to a laptop, which then trasmits the instructions onwards to the helicopter.

A user can move the flyer forward by thinking 'right', fly up by thinking 'push', and turn clockwise by thinking 'left'.

Clenched teeth and blinking both produce a brain signal that the EEG can read, which can tell the helicopter to take a picture or even stream video back to a laptop.

 

Users can capture a still by blinking four times.

The system is due to be presented next month at the Ubiquitous Computing Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.