The Australian army is experimenting with a form of electronic "telepathy" that allows soldiers to control robot dogs using brain waves, and without using any kind of implants. 3 years ago I wrote on this same blog that the concept was no longer science fiction, and now I see it as quite real. And seen up close, I admit, this thing is even uglier.
The robot's best friend
The lieutenant colonel Kate Tollenaar from the Australian Army's Robotic and Autonomous Systems explains: “This collaboration focused on how to create a robotic brain interface that will allow a soldier to operate the system using brain signals rather than through a command console.” To put it this way it seems like a trifle.
How does the electronic telepathy developed by the Australian Army work? The system includes a helmet that reads brain signals and translates them into commands for the robot dogs. The hybrid system was developed using a headset HoloLens 2 and a custom decoder equipped with artificial intelligence. “On the inside, the helmet translates brain waves into zeros and ones,” says Sergeant Damien Robinson of the Army Combat Service Support Battalion. “And then into information for a number of different systems.”
Yesterday hunting, today robot dogs, tomorrow "swarms of swarms"
Brain-computer interface technology has long been the subject of research by many public and private laboratories (remember Neuralink?). And it has already proven useful in many fields. In the military context, this experimental technology could represent a significant technological advantage. Take a look at the video for yourself, which shows tests done with robot dogs Vision-60 from Ghostrobotics:
The “electronic telepathy” system is an example of how brain-computer interface technology is evolving and could lead to big changes in many fields. Often, unfortunately, the first employment is always in the military field (and could involve driving entire vehicles “swarms of swarms” of drones. Death machines in land, sea and sky attacking simultaneously).
Then the positive effects in daily life will come.
One day this technology could make the fortune of precision medicine. A surgeon could operate with arms that respond identically to his own, with the ability to correct small positional errors, and from a distance from the operating room. In everyday life, a "helmet" for driving vehicles could be the intermediate interface, the missing link between today's steering wheel and tomorrow's autonomous driving. Or constitute the device capable of making us physically operate in every place and scenario of the world, real or virtual.
But these are pious hypotheses. Even slightly utopian hypotheses, which are destined to be covered for some time, I hope not for long, by robot dogs and battle cries.
