When Jan Sheuermann first agreed to participate in a research project run by DARPA (creators of the Internet, amongst other things) and University of Pittsburgh’s Human Engineering Research Laboratories, she wasn't expecting too much - maybe the ability to feed herself some chocolate using a robotic arm.
Instead, Sheuermann, who is unable to move her arms and legs due to a neurodegenerative disease, ended up with her brain-interface connected to a flight simulator. She’d use the same neural connections that she'd successfully used to control a robotic arm to pilot an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter—the military’s next-gen attack jet.
The experiments are in the early stages and there's little chance of this technology putting our own much-loved Major Kong out of the pilot business (although, looking on the bright side, if it did, the Major would have more time to write his excellent aviation diaries for Daily Kos).
According to Wired.com:
The research was conducted under Darpa’s Revolutionizing Prosthetics research track, which is geared towards better robotic arms for injured veterans. “We are thinking about exactly how to restore function after injury, how the brain can be used to actuate devices,” says Justin Sanchez, the head of Darpa’s prosthetics research. He says projects like this are helping push the limits of what is possible with artificial neural circuitry.
The notion of controlling technology though a 'neural interface' is not a new one and the first experiments were carried out as long ago as the 1970s, at UCLA (also funded by DARPA).
In 2004,Thomas DeMarse at the University of Florida used a culture of 25,000 neurons taken from a rat's brain to fly a F-22 fighter jet aircraft simulator.
Ms. Sheuermann's achievement was announced by DARPA director Arati Prabhakar at the Future of War forum.
"Instead of thinking about controlling a joystick, which is what our ace pilots do when they're driving this thing, Jan's thinking about controlling the airplane directly. For someone who's never flown - she's not a pilot in real life - she's flying that simulator directly from her neural signalling," said Prabhakar during the forum.
As technology keeps making leaps and bounds in myriad fields--materials tech, processor speeds, miniaturization, etc--the idea of 'mind-control' over technology keeps edging closer.
The real achievement here is reprogramming the same neuronal wiring that controlled a robotic arm to fly a virtual fighter jet. “Fundamentally it’s demonstrations like this that change the way that we think about the way brain does work in the world,” says Sanchez. It’s an early step, but he says this raises interesting questions about whether humanity could one day outgrow physical interfaces with its machines. This is about more than just video games—it’s about finding a fundamentally new way to interact with the virtual world, and maybe even the real one.
So, while it's true to say that the 'piloting an F-35' is kind of a stunt, it nonetheless indicates what may be possible in the near future. Is it really that far-fetched, at a time when Google is building driverless cars, to imagine the following scenario?
You leave your house and climb into your solar-powered car. There are no controls. You simply plug in a tiny usb10/bluetooth dongle into a barely visible usb-point behind your ear (covered with a flesh-colored flap when not in use) and 'tell' the car what to do and where to go.
But perhaps more importantly, this research suggests that there will be a time in the foreseeable future when losing the use of limbs, through illness or accident, will no longer mean an inability to do all the things that one could do before: walking, cooking, playing cards etc etc. And that has to be a good thing.