Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Quadriplegic Woman Flies F-35

     Everyone's dream of mind control is just getting closer and closer to reality. Arati Prabhakar, director of the Pentagon's advanced research arm DARPA, stated that a quadriplegic woman was able to maneuver an F-35 fighter jet using nothing but her thoughts. Jan Schuermann, a 55 year old quadriplegic was recruited by DARPA for its robotics programs back in 2012. Because of her hereditary genetic disease, doctors implanted electrodes in the left motor complex of her brain to allow her to control a robotic arm, a feat she accomplished. However, she wasn't using this robotic arm to fly an F-35 simulator. Instead, she was using her thoughts and flying a fighter with nothing but pure neural signalling. This is an amazing achievement but it brings with it good and bad things.
     Lets start off with the good things. With this breakthrough, the human body is no longer limited by its physical constraints. We are now able to used our bodies to the limit and this technology only goes as far as our imaginations. Military veterans, handicapped people, and everyone with motor problems, all of whom are unable to do so many basic things can now control anything they want with their minds. Of course this technology is only in the developmental phase and will probably remain with the military but that doesn't mean that this technology can't offer hope to those in need. Machine and human integration is definitely the next step for mankind.  
     As for the bad part. I feel that by training fighter pilots to fly jets with their minds, the training of flying it manually will diminish. When all the computers that control this malfunction, will the pilots still know how to control the $150 million machines they are flying. I think that in order for this to work, they have to seamlessly integrate the two.
     This technology must be used for the betterment of mankind. Not only will it bolster the military, it'll make everyone's live a little bit better. I look forward in hearing more about this technology in the future.

No comments:

Post a Comment