US university stages world-first mind-controlled drone race

The University of Florida has staged the first-ever brain-controlled drone race, bringing everyday use of the technology ever closer.

The competition held last week involved 16 contestants using specially calibrated brain-computer interface (BCI) headsets to steer individual drones across a nine-metre indoor basketball court.

Video of the experimental race shows contestants staring at computer screens wearing looks of concentration as they seemingly control the flight of a drone using just their thoughts.

The drones appear to respond, rising and advancing somewhat sluggishly across the court.

In order to first operate the electroencephalogram headsets, the contestants reportedly had to imagine pushing something forward.

The resulting neuron activity in their brains was then mapped to a forward movement in the drone’s modified controller.

Contestants then attempted to reproduce the same neuron activity in order to drive their drones forward.

The University of Florida’s recent exercise represents just one of many potential applications for emerging BCI technology.

BCI has already shown promise in helping paralysed individuals and amputees to control robotic and prosthetic limbs.

The university hopes to one day develop last week’s race into an “annual inter-collegiate spectacle”, AP reports.

“With events like this, we're popularising the use of BCI instead of it being stuck in the research lab," engineering student Chris Crawford said.

"BCI was a technology that was geared specifically for medical purposes, and in order to expand this to the general public, we actually have to embrace these consumer brand devices and push them to the limit."

Start-ups NeuroSky and Emotiv now sell electroencephalogram headset starter kits for as low as US$99.99 (A$129).

As the once-exclusive technology becomes available to the average consumer, researchers at The University of Florida are hopeful that more examples of such innovation will emerge.