Future Soldiers May Control Military Drones With Their Minds

Dhir Acharya - Dec 13, 2019

Six research teams are working under a program with the aim of creating a technology that allows soldiers to control drones using just their thoughts.

The Pentagon is attempting to build a technology that will let soldiers used their minds to control deadly military drones.

Neuroscientist Al Emondi from DARPA said that these devices are meant to operate at the speed of thought instead of relying on mechanical devices. Emondi gave a heads-up about the Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology program that DARPA launched in March last year with the hope to develop a BCI (brain-computer interface) that doesn’t require a surgical implant.

This May, DARPA awarded funding to six research teams in the US to pursue this goal, each of which holds a different approach from one another. For instance, one team is based at Carnegie Mellon University, who is performing tests to find out if ultrasound and electrical signals can support a non-surgical BCI. Meanwhile, another team is at Johns Hopkins University exploring the feasibility of near-infrared light.

However, creating a device that allows drones controlling through the minds of soldiers raises all types of troubling questions. What if a soldier thinks a command by accident? What if an enemy steals one device and gets control over the drones?

But all those questions aside, technologies initially developed for use in the military often end up making their way to civilian life and BCI’s influence on society can’t likely be overstated. For example, a regular user can strap the device on and control all of their devices that are connected to the Internet with their thoughts only.

It gets even more exciting regarding health applications. With a BCI device, people that have lost their limbs or those with paralysis can rely on just their minds to control prosthetics or even exoskeletons without having to undergo another surgery.

However, first thing first, we need a functional technology and as the DARPA research teams are making certain progress, there’s a lot to do before they can come up with a non-invasive BCI that is ready for military or even civilian use.