Drones on the market today are getting smarter, less expensive, and more powerful. And they are now being used today in a wide variety of ways to help in multiple industry spaces. We've got drones being used to assist with tasks like fire fighting, crop monitoring, area surveillance, and more. The drones are able to be used to accomplish multiple tasks, though when it comes to using multiple drones, that required multiple human operators. Not anymore though.

Now the technology is available to enable a single human operator to control a swarm of drones.

Researchers at Arizona State University, via the Human Oriented Robotics Control Lab (HORC), have been working on this technology for quite some time now. And they recently revealed that there is now the ability to have only one single operator control multiple drones thanks to emerging human-brain interface mechanisms.

Not only that, but that in the next few years we can expect to see this technology be used in a variety of ways.

Plenty of research on this subject has been taking place over the last few decades. And the team at Arizona State, headed by Panagiotis Artemiadis, has been working not only on the drone swarms, but they've also been working on neural interfaces that are connected with the hands and arms of a robot.

The research team has been training humans to imagine the scenario/behavior that they want, in the way of what command or movement they want to carry out. And from there, they say that they are training an algorithm to relate those behaviors to activations from different areas of the brain. They've been sending the commands for the drone through an EEG cap.

If we have the ability for only one person to be able to control a swarm of drones, then that could help to boost productivity in a number of industry spaces even further.

Search and Rescue

One of the many ways that drone technology can be helpful today is in search and rescue missions. And a fleet of drones is likely to be more effective in covering a large area quicker than it would take a group of people engaged in some search and rescue to conduct. This will help those teams to be able to cover more area in a less amount of time and that could be life-saving for some.

Fire Fighting

There are already multiple fire departments working with drones to try and improve their services. And this technology is going to help them to fight the fires even better. The drones have infrared imaging equipment and that enables them to be able to track the spread of a fire over a large area so that the fire fighters can more effectively fight the fire. The use of the drone technology in this way again can help to going toward saving lives and preventing loss and damage by helping and enabling fire fighters to fight the fire better than they could before.

Crop Analysis

A number of farmers have been using drone technology to help them to assess their crops. They've been useful in assisting with things like soil analysis, crop planting, crop monitoring, irrigation, crop spraying, and more. The drones are helping farmers to be better able to take care of their crops and that helps them to increase their yields; reducing crop damage.

Other Areas

Aside from the uses listed above, there are many other uses that they have proven to be good for. In the sports community they are being used to record practices, in the news community they are helping to record better coverage especially from areas that might not be safe for people to travel to. They're helping medical companies deliver life-saving medical equipment. And within the entertainment industry, numerous projects have sought to use drones to put on a variety of different light shows and displays.

This is one technology that has drastically helped to improve the service in many industry spaces and they have proven that they can be a heck of a lot more beneficial to us, than simply using them for warfare to destroy communities around the world.

Pics:
Pixabay
Pixabay
Pixabay
NBC via nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Use-of-Drones-Growing-in-Firefighting-Efforts-Use-Controversial-380842741.html
Pixabay

Sources:
http://www.thedrive.com/aerial/15322/mind-controlled-drone-fleets-are-coming-researcher-says
http://bwdisrupt.businessworld.in/article/Brain-Controlled-Drones-are-Here/16-10-2017-128724/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170929230433.htm
http://sciencenewsjournal.com/thinking-control-multiple-drones-using-wireless-interface/

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