New research funded by the U.S. military has found a way for a drone pilot to control a whole swarm, or possibly advanced fighter jets, with a brain-computer interface that bypasses traditional controls, Defense One reports.
Officials from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, announced on Thursday that they had successfully improved upon technology that allowed a paralyzed woman to pilot a virtual F-35, allowing a pilot to steer multiple jets simultaneously.
"As of today, signals from the brain can be used to command and control … not just one aircraft, but three simultaneous types of aircraft," Justin Sanchez, the director of DARPA’s biological technology office, said at an event for the agency’s 60th anniversary.
"The signals from those aircraft can be delivered directly back to the brain so that the brain of that user [or pilot] can also perceive the environment," Sanchez added. "It’s taken a number of years to try and figure this out."
Instead of simply controlling the vehicles, a pilot can have a kind of conversation with the drones or jets about what is happening around them.
"We’ve scaled it to three [aircraft], and have full sensory [signals] coming back. So you can have those other planes out in the environment and then be detecting something and send that signal back into the brain," Sanchez said.
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