A 69-year-old man with paralysis and a brain implant was able to fly a virtual drone through complex obstacle courses, simply by thinking about moving his fingers, thanks to an experimental device developed by researchers from Stanford University.
The participant, who has quadriplegia from a C4 spinal cord injury, navigated obstacle courses and random flight patterns using neural signals from two tiny electrode arrays implanted in his brain. His ability to combine multiple movements simultaneously represents a significant advance in brain-computer interface technology.
For the experiment, researchers developed a system that can decode four distinct control dimensions from brain signals. This level of control matches what able-bodied gamers achieve with physical controllers, the researchers said.
“Just as able-bodied users of digital systems use their fingers to manipulate keyboards and game controllers, this system allows an intuitive framework for a brain-controlled digital interface, providing opportunities for recreation and socialization as well as eliciting feelings of enablement.”
“He expressed on multiple occasions (even before enrollment in the clinical trial) that one of his most important personal priorities was to use a BCI ($0.00) to control a quadcopter,” the researchers wrote in their paper. “He felt controlling a quadcopter would enable him, for t…
