Photo: Ryan Wakefield
Brain-Drone Racing League members and volunteers watch a drone pull ahead as racers at the other end of the court prepare for their match.
Head-to-Head: College of Engineering’s Neuro-Machine Interaction Lab Hosts USF’s First Brain-Controlled Drone Race By Russell Nay
S
tudents, faculty and USF community members watched
A total of 60 students registered for the qualifier.
as USF students faced off at the USF Yuengling Center during the university’s first-ever brain-controlled drone
race.
The event’s announcer counted down each race, and on “go” the racers would focus on a computer screen window with a multicolored cube in the middle. By focusing on pushing
The crowd of more than 300 filtered into the Corral of the
the cube while wearing their electroencephalography (EEG)
event center, where the USF Volleyball team court was cleared
headbands, students could coax their drones to lift off their
and surrounded by nets with two sets of tables at each end.
starting pads and hover toward the finish line.
For the next four hours, groups of two student competitors would go head-to-head on the court to see who could move a
Reaching the other side of the court, however, was no easy
drone the fastest with nothing but their minds.
task. Some drones refused to budge, while others stopped halfway across the court as their drivers had a momentary
The students, who represented the U.S., Brazil, India,
lapse in focus. Racers needed to focus completely on their
Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Bangladesh, Kuwait and
drone moving forward to win their matches.
Japan, were the 16 students with the quickest times who passed a qualifying round in January to compete in the race. Continued on next page.
Envision Magazine
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