Scientists have made an incredible discovery in the ability to move objects with the power of thought

Scientists have taken the first step towards remote and wireless mind control of metamaterials in real time. (CREDIT: Creative Commons)

Metamaterials have received a lot of attention in many fields due to their unusual physical properties. This gave the researchers a new concept in the creation of artificial materials, giving energy and vitality to modern functional materials. As a two-dimensional analogue of metamaterials, metasurfaces have unprecedented freedom in controlling electromagnetic waves.

With field programming, programmable metasurfaces (PM) with multiple or switchable functions can be implemented and then integrated with sensors or controlled by predefined software. Self-adaptability greatly improves response speed by eliminating human intervention. Switching between different functions on these PMs is usually done manually. The fundamental structure is wired, manually operated, and switched non-real-time. Therefore, it is very interesting to create a whole structure that can implement remote, wireless, mind-controlled functional metasurfaces in real time.

In a new paper published in eLight, a collaborative team led by Prof. Shaobo Qu and Prof. Jiafu Wang of the Air Force University of Engineering and Prof. Cheng-Wei Qiu of the National University of Singapore has taken the first step towards real-time remote control. and wireless mind control of metamaterials. Their paper titled “Mind-Controlled Metasurface Using Brain Waves” proposes a framework for realizing this goal.

Traditionally, the involvement and participation of people is usually necessary for many scenarios. A person must control the metasurface with his mind directly. It is also well known that the human brain generates brain waves in the process of thinking.

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The authors hypothesized that collecting brainwaves and using them as metasurface control signals would allow users to control the metasurfaces with their minds. This will also improve the response speed of the metasurfaces. This development would mark a huge step towards truly intelligent metasurfaces.

The schematic diagram shows that people use brain wave control to manipulate electromagnetic waves, which can be extended in some illustrative scenarios such as attention monitoring, reconfigurable antenna, fatigue monitoring, etc., Xinmin Fu, Yuzhi Shi, Xingsi Liu, Tonghao Liu, Zhongtao Zhang, Zuntian Chu, Cheng-Wei Qiu, Shaobo Qu)

The research team achieved remote control by wirelessly transmitting brainwaves from the user to the controller via Bluetooth. The goal was to use the user’s brainwaves to control the PM’s electromagnetic response. Taking this path, they demonstrated RMCM, in which the user could control the scatterplot.

In the process of extracting and transmitting brain wave signals, the TGAM module extracts brain wave signals and converts them into an attention value. And the attention information is transmitted remotely from the Bluetooth module to the Arduino, which outputs different voltages, differentiating the values. (LETTER: Ruichao Zhu, Jiafu Wang, Tianshuo Qiu, Yajuan Han, Xinmin Fu, Yuzhi Shi, Xingxi Liu, Tonghao Liu, Zhongtao Zhang, Zongtian Chu, Cheng-Wei Qiu, Shaobo Qu)

Simulation and testing results showed that the user’s brainwaves directly controlled the outcome, with significantly faster control speed and switching speed. This indicates that their model was far superior to any existing model or product on the market. Their design can be further modified to improve the accuracy of their equipment.

In a microwave anechoic chamber, the operator remotely controls the metasurface coding sequence through a brainwave module that influences the electromagnetic wave scattering mode. The test shows that EM waves can be controlled by the human mind. (LETTER: Ruichao Zhu, Jiafu Wang, Tianshuo Qiu, Yajuan Han, Xinmin Fu, Yuzhi Shi, Xingxi Liu, Tonghao Liu, Zhongtao Zhang, Zongtian Chu, Cheng-Wei Qiu, Shaobo Qu)

The research team hopes to combine this with intelligent algorithms and improve processes in the future. They believe that their work can be easily extended to other mind-controlled functional or multifunctional metasurfaces. It can find applications in fields as diverse as health monitoring, 5G/6G communications, and smart sensors.

For more science news, visit our New Innovations section at The bright side of the news.

Note. Materials provided by the Light Publishing Center of the Changchun Institute of Optics. Content can be edited for style and length.

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