Innovations & technologies

In this league, drone races are won by brainwaves alone

Guided only by the furrowed brow of its stern pilot, the drone hovers forward. The scale is small — an EEG headset, two 30-foot-long tracks in a college gymnasium, and a handful of small, palm-sized quadcopters — but the possibilities are not.

The competition, put on Feb. 4 by the Brain Drone Racing League at the University of South Florida, awarded its winner a trophy and a take-home quadcopter. Despite the modest scale of the event, the Brain Drone Racing League offers insights into the potential and limitations of brain-control interfaces for controlling vehicles.

February’s race was the fourth for the league, which bills the sport as a level playing field across ability distinctions. There’s an esport version, which served as the trial for piloting the drones in physical space. In the virtual and real versions, players wearing an electroencephalogram, or EEG, headset look at the image of a block on a screen. As players concentrate on moving the block, the EEG interprets that electrical activity and translates it into movement, guiding a simulated drone in the virtual competitions or a real one in the live competitions.