Combat AI ‘robodogs’ follow telepathic commands from soldiers

A breakthrough in artificial intelligence being tested by the Australian military reportedly allows soldiers to control robot dogs solely with their minds.

Called a brain robotic interface, the state-of-the-art artificial intelligence — through a high-tech biosensor headset — analyzes brainwave readings and feeds them from a person’s visual cortex into the advanced “robodog,” Newsflash reported.

“The whole process is not difficult to master. It’s very intuitive. It only took a couple of sessions,” said 5th Combat Service Support Battalion Sergeant Damian Robinson, who test-drove the HoloLens headset.

Robinson and fellow soldiers did course training with the mind-reading headsets and robodogs, in which they were able to successfully navigate harsh terrain and bad weather on a makeshift battlefield.

The current key to keeping the bots on course are flickering beacons — seen as augmented reality in the headsets — which work as waypoints that the canine-like automatons move toward.

“You don’t have to think anything specific to operate the robot, but you do need to focus on that flicker,” Robinson said. “It’s more of a visual concentration thing.”

The technology, which was buoyed by a $1.2 million military investment, was worked on for the past three years in a collaboration between the University of Technology Sydney and the army’s Robotic and Autonomous Implementation and Coordination Office (RICO).

So far, the dog — manufactured by Ghost Robotics — is capable of nine different commands during a fixed time, according to Prof. Chin-Teng Lin.

Doing so came via a breakthrough that minimized noise from both an operator’s environment and their own body.

The HoloLens’ unprecedented efficiency comes by way of an ultra-thin compound known as graphene, which is described as being “many times stronger than steel, yet incredibly lightweight and flexible.”

“We’ve been able to combine the best of graphene, which is very biocompatible and very conductive, with the best of silicon technology, which makes our biosensor very resilient and robust to use,” said Professor Francesca Iacopi, a fellow project leader.