At last: The brain-controlled helicopter

Brain-controlled helicopters could be ready for Santa's elves to drop down US chimneys in time for Christmas this year. San Francisco firm Puzzlebox has raised the cash it needs to put together its flying toys, equipped with an electroencephalography (EEG) headset, twice over on Kickstarter. The headset "reads" brain waves …

[TRT]

Females only?

Because I've heard it's rare for a male brain to be able to control a chopper.

[Neil 30]

Re: Females only?

...it is a very small chopper

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Am I the only one?

Seeing the image of this odd-looking helicopter, I immediately got this image of some geek with the thing on his head as a very high-tech propellor-head

And, no I do not want one for my kids!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Curious

Curious as to whether this works, i used to work with a company that was trying to use brainwave headsets (Cant remember the manafacturer) to control games and such, it never got off the ground despite 5 years of trying to get something more than a random number out of the headset.

Yes we can read brain waves, yes we can turn that into a number that we can then build upon, no we cant do anything useful with it yet.

I admire the opening up of the process etc but honestly dont expect this to do much til at least a few more years of dev.

[TRT]

Re: Curious

You have to think in Russian...

[Tom 35]

Re: Curious

Don't know if this qualifies as "do anything useful" but...

http://gizmodo.com/5932789/necomimi-brainwave-cat-ears-review-why-you-need-psychic-cyborg-animal-ears

[Chandy]

heliball

That exact helicopter-parts-in-a-ball thing is available in Costco for about £20.

Sadly, this is sans the brain-control gadgetry, but I'm sure you can wire your own in if you like.

[Maty]

but ...?

If this is the first brain-controlled helicopter, how have helicopters been controlled up to now?

[Euripides Pants]

Re: but ...?

They haven't been controlled at all. We've just been extremely lucky.

[Serge 2]

Meh.... Nothing to see here...

I have this EEG device on my desk right now. The only useful thing it can do is to measure overall brain activity reasonably ok, I.e. alert and relaxed. So the only thing you can successfully and repeatably do is to switch between the above mentioned states by focusing on a particular thought, or closing your eyes, which will almost automatically force you in to low activity mental state . Glorified toggle switch... Meh...

[Radiodoc]

Terrible AUDIO "quality"

The entro "music" seemed "ok" but after that - the audio went from bad to worse!

[Steven Roper]

I can see my little nephew now

who by 2015 will be old enough to comment on my old-school RC helicopter (not to mention my old-school computer games):

"You mean you have to use your hands? That's like a babies' toy!"