BMI technology is like anything else; you have an evolution process to finally reach a level of maturity. The good news is that at least at this point of time BMI is at least in that cycle where we are no longer crawling and trying to stand up. We’re in that stage of the cycle where we are standing up and taking a couple of steps at a time. In the next 3 to 5 years, things should be extremely interesting in the BMI space especially as we begin to introduce more sophisticated technology to our connected infrastructure.
Will future soldiers be able to use a direct brain interface to control their hardware?
Imagine if the brain could tell a machine what to do without having to type, speak or use other standard interfaces. That’s the aim of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which has committed US$60 million to a Neural Engineering System Design (NESD) project to do just that.
“Today’s best brain-computer interface systems are like two supercomputers trying to talk to each other using an old 300-baud modem,” said Phillip Alvelda, the NESD program manager. “Imagine what will become possible when we upgrade our tools to really open the channel between the human brain and modern electronics.”