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German Scientists Successfully Test Brain-Controlled Flight Simulator
New submitter stephendavion (2872091) writes "Scientists from the Institute for Flight System Dynamics at Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany have demonstrated the feasibility of flying a brain-controlled aircraft. Led by professor Florian Holzapfel, the team is researching ways that brain-controlled flight works in the EU-funded project 'Brainflight'. TUM project head Tim Fricke said a long-term vision of the project is to make flying accessible to more people." So far, the tests are only simulator based, but promising.
This might not end well.
Wasn't this a movie? With monkeys or something?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Why not call it "Flight of fancy"? ;-) Having said that, brain control is a seriously cool idea (not in the opposite direction, though), not just for airplanes. (Prosthetic limbs sound like a more common prospective application, though.)
Ezekiel 23:20
What is brain controlled? That the mind points to where it wants to go, and the computer has to figure out how to get there without stalling, crashing into things, going into a spiral and what not?
Because withouth knowing the concepts of aerodynamics, what exactly is the brain going to contribute?
And what happens when the mind wanders?
I fail to see how this is better than a touch screen interface that would turn it into a self-flying plane.
Clint Eastwood already did that back in the 80's
But strangely enough, it only works if you think in Russian.
(Movie references [1], [2], [3])
The Germana researchers conducted flight simulator tests on seven subjects with varying levels of flight experience, including one person without any practical cockpit experience. "One of the subjects was able to follow eight out of ten target headings with a deviation of only 10," Fricke added. Several of the pilots who participated in the tests managed the landing approach under poor visibility, while one test pilot even landed within only few metres of the centerline.
So out of 7 subjects, 6 with flight experience, 1 was able to follow course headings with an error of 10 degrees. That's pathetic. It's the difference between Baltimore and Washington D.C. (or worse).
Then one was able to land within a "few meters" of the centerline... and that is touted as success? So that means most of the others couldn't hit the runway.
GPS controls would have done better. So basically success to these guys is "subject turns head left + plane turns some direction left = success".
It's going to be a long time before I board a 737 with this crap on the pilot's head.
I finally updated my sig, but now it's lame.
Also, I speak Russian, and it was a painful moment when Eastwood makes it by the guards with his unintelligible, garbled response.
"With brain control, flying, in itself, could become easier," Fricke said. "This would reduce the workload of pilots and thereby increase safety. In addition, pilots would have more freedom of movement to manage other manual tasks in the cockpit."
How would it increase safety? Seems that you are replacing reliable manual control (often combined with autopilot) with something really finicky which requires your mind to be extremely concentrated solely on the flying task.
This should make commercial air travel much cheaper and safer as airlines begin to do away with the single-point of failure that costly human pilots represent, implementing instead a crowd-based solution that empowers all passengers to contribute equally to guiding the plane to wherever they decide will be the flight's destination.
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
You mean up until now pilots have been flying without using their brain?!?
It's been a few years but I don't think Philo Beddoe used a neural interface to control Clyde the orangutan.
Maybe you're thinking of Matthew Broderick ?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Call me when this helps get my LUGGAGE to the same airport as me.
Sometimes the "writing on the wall" is blood spatter...
Wasn't there an Airwolf episode where they were walking through Archangel's lab workspace, and some researcher was controlling a model plane with his mind?
Or maybe I'm thinking of an old Knight Rider episode.
The summary states that the goal of this is to make flying accessible to more people. Does that mean the research is being done so quadriplegics can still pilot a plane or is it for John Q. Public? Each raises its own question.
For quadriplegics and other people with disabilities, is there really a high demand for this? Are there large numbers of disabled people who the necessary knowledge to pilot a plane? For John Q. Public, wouldn't they still need to know how to fly? Flying is about more than just controlling wing surfaces and rudders and air speed.
For both groups, if the goal is to make flying accessible to more people then wouldn't research into an autonomous plane (like the Google cars) make more sense? We already have auto-pilots on the latest commercial airliners that can even land and take off.
Is this a real problem to be solved or is it merely a solution looking for a problem?
a long-term vision of the project is to make flying accessible to more people
If people have problems driving without distractions, imagine if the car went where they were thinking/looking.... Now let them do it in 3 dimensions.....
What could possibly go wrong?
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
He'd probably love to be able to 'play' something
Think in Russian.
That was for the movie; I did not rtfa, but it would be odd to expect German pilots to think in Po-Russki.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
(Muses to self...) "Gee, I hope I don't have to eject..." "YEEEEEE!!!"
For years and years.
Given the approach, the listed "successes" are no wonder.
This EEG-based stuff typically works on the so-called P300 response, i.e., the fact that 300ms after(!) thinking something you can measure a response in the brain waves, if you just look closely enough.
Unfortunately, that's not only horrible laggish, but also not really precise. For more complex tasks like easy games like train simulators you already end up having positive interpretation in the range of 48% to 52% (so closely centered around guessing ...), with most test subjects not exceeding around 60-65%.
With some few test persons you might be able to get something in the 70-90% range, but from what I've seen over time I have a feeling that they rather get trained (or somewhat train themselves) to produce responses the EEG pickup system can read better rather than the computer getting better at reading their brainwaves.
Using P300-based spellers achieves a best-case net bit rate of around 2 bits/second. So already typing a single character will take in the range of 3 seconds.
I don't see how this will ever be sped up unless we go for deep brain-probing, which probably no human test subject wants to volunteer for (it's used for mice experiments, though, in certain virtual reality experiments studying learning and orientation).
Crowd souring navigation only sounds good until the plane full of business people going to San Jose ends up trying to fly to Hawaii.
to fracking toasters.
so say we all
Suicide bombers are going hate this.
I guess the Robotech / Macross Saga is getting in on all the Star Trek life-imitating-art action.
After getting a drone aloft, scientists released control of the drone to each test subject and asked them to use their mental powers to drive the drone "right into the ground". Scientists' exuberance became more and more frenetic as each test subject flawlessly performed the assigned task.
I'm can't divulge where I saw this but lets just say my first job out of college was a lot of fun, I saw a lot of things that I can't speak about even to this day.. but been there, seen that. the project may have been declassified because NOVA ran an episode that featured the Scientists work that was used to design it. Eventually the scientists left and just freelanced on his own and did lectures at colleges to earn money to live. the NOVA special featured a clip of the work I speak of as well as his though controlled train set and sailboat. Where I met him he had his train set set up outside his office. The project I speak of.. well.. that was in the lab.