Brain implant lets paralyzed man fly virtual drone with thought

A man suffering from paralysis who has electrodes implanted in his brain can steer a virtual drone through an obstacle course by imagining moving his fingers. Their brain signals are interpreted by an AI model and then used to control a simulated drone.

Brain-computer interface (BCI) research has made great strides in recent years, allowing people with paralysis to precisely control a mouse cursor and dictate speech to a computer by imagining writing words with a pen. But so far, they have not shown any great promise in complex applications with multiple inputs.

Now, Matthew Wilsey He and his colleagues at the University of Michigan have created an algorithm that allows a user to trigger four different gestures simply by imagining moving their fingers and thumb.

The unidentified person who tried this technique has tetraplegia due to a spinal cord injury. He was already fitted with a BCI made up of 192 electrodes from BlackRock Neurotech, which were implanted in the area of ​​the brain that controls arm movement.

An AI model was used to map the complex neural signals received by the electrodes according to the user’s thoughts. The participant learned how moving the first two fingers of a hand produced an electrical signal that could be made stronger or weaker. Another signal was produced from the other two fingers and from the other two fingers.

These were enough to allow the user to control a virtual drone by mere thought, and with practice he could maneuver it through an obstacle course. Wilsey says the experiment could have been conducted using real drones, but was kept virtual for ease and safety.

“The goal of doing the quadcopter was really shared between our lab and the participant,” says Wilsey. “For him, it was the realization of a dream he thought was lost after his injury. He had a passion and dream to fly. He seemed very strong and capable; He used to ask us to take videos and send them to friends.”

Wilsey says that although the results are impressive, there is still a lot to be done before BCIs can be used reliably for complex tasks. First, AI is needed to interpret the signals from the electrodes, and this depends on individual training for each user. Second, this training must be repeated over time as functionality declines, which may be caused by electrodes moving slightly in the brain or changes in the brain itself.