A team of researchers from the Technische Universität München ( TUM ) , led by Professor Florian Holzapfel and aerospace engineer Tim Fricke , are ferment on an EU - funded undertaking named “ Brainflight ” which take aim to allow pilots of the time to come to be able to control aircraft by their thoughts .
“ A retentive - term vision of the labor is to make flying accessible to more citizenry , ” says Fricke in anews - liberation . “ With brain control , fly , in itself , could become well-to-do . This would reduce the work load of pilots and thereby increase safety . In improver , pilots would have more freedom of movement to manage other manual undertaking in the cockpit . ”
So how does it work ? Pilots are fitted with a cap fit with electroencephalography electrode which measure electric impulses along the scalp . These signals are then fed back to a computing machine which use an algorithm , germinate by scientists from the Berlin Institute of Technology , to translate these impulsion into bid . “ This is gross signal processing,”says Fricke .
Although this may go a little scientific discipline fabrication , the team has actually demonstrate that it sour , and is imposingly accurate . They carry out tests at the Institute for Flight System Dynamics at TUM involving seven subjects with unlike levels of flight experience , one of whom had no previous pragmatic cockpit experience . Of course , they were n’t using real planes ; the test involve flight of stairs simulation .
Using mentality control alone , the test subjects were able to manoeuver the simulated aircraft with a grade of precision that would have been enough to part live up to the requirements of an existent flying license test . “ One of the subjects was capable to follow eight out of ten target area headings with a deviation of only ten degrees , ” saysFricke . Furthermore , some of the subjects demonstrated that they could manoeuver the woodworking plane towards land successfully in poor visibility .
In its current form , the system is far from quick for program program in real sheet as they have a few tricky hurdles to overcome first . One military issue is that in real aircrafts , archetype feel resistor in steering and when large loads are induced on the aircraft the pilot needs to respond by exert forcible force . This feedback system is non - existent in the new control method acting , so the team will need to find a way to get round this and develop another feedback chemical mechanism .
