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Drones you can control with your mind on show at Dubai Expo




Hand-controllers beware: you may soon be surplus to requirements.

At the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai last week, Emotiv, an Australian-based company were showing off one of their highly impressive innovations.

They have developed a headset which monitors your brainwaves and can be used to control electronic devices, including drones.

We have previously written about Samsung’s plans for flying screens that follow you around and are controlled through hand gestures and eye movements. This invention, however, takes things to a whole new level.

Wow! Are you telling me people can literally move objects using the power of their minds?

Yes indeed. We are literally at a point in society where you can become a poor man’s version of Professor X for just a few hundred bucks.

It’s an exciting new horizon and offers a whole range of possibilities, particularly for people with disabilities. Emotiv have designed many of their technolgies with disabled people in mind. Think for a second of the recently departed Stephen Hawking. If it were not for a sophisticated computer, he would have been severely limited in his ability to communicate. The world would never have come to know his brilliant insights on the world, life and the universe. If people’s bodies are not able to perform as they would wish them to, why not augment our brains using technology to increase our scope of possibilities?

How does it work?

The Emotiv headset controller. Note: You will almost certainly look worse wearing the headset than her.

First, you place their headset on. Fact: wearing the headset will make you look like a bit of goober. I’d argue that’s a price well worth paying given the incredible stuff you can do with it.

The headset is an electroencephalogram (EEG) device which picks up your brain’s electrical impulses through sensors on your scalp. It records them on a computer and translates those thought patterns into flight instructions for a small drone.

Basically – you imagine the drone lifting off the ground and voila – it does. From the available videos on that you have much control aside from takeoff and landing but, being honest, that’s already pretty frigging cool!

As a matter of fact – these headsets are not primarily for controlling drones. They have been developed to measure individual brain functions including concentration levels and stress. They can be worn by users who have an interest in learning more about their brain or becoming more productive.

The Emotiv drone in action

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