Innovations & technologies

Brain-Machine Interfaces Come One Step Closer

The US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is looking to develop a working mind-computer interface, as we’ve written here before. But what uses would such technology have? One possible application would be better, faster, and more accurate vehicle control. Plugging in a brain into a plane, for example, would eliminate the time delay and error potential in using muscles to control a joystick.

“The military appear interested in the potential for jet fighters to control their planes with direct thought control, rather than using their arms. The reaction time you’d shave off would be milliseconds,” says Dr Tom Oxley, a neurologist at University of Melbourne (UoM) and Royal Melbourne Hospital.

Oxley and his colleague Dr Nick Opie, a biomedical engineer at the UoM’s Vascular Bionics Laboratory, have been working for the past four years with a diverse team of engineers and surgeons across 16 UoM departments to develop a brain-machine interface that could make all this possible.