DARPA Project Aims to Connect Intelligent Binoculars to a Soldier’s Brain

            The U.S Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) says it will soon begin development of high-tech binoculars that could be 10 times more powerful than anything available today.  The device is intended for use by U.S. Special Forces units.
            The binoculars are expected to be augmented by a novel system that could contact the wearer's prefrontal cortex to warn of furtive threats detected by the soldier's subconscious.  This kind of threat detection depends on the use of neuromorphic engineering -- the science of using hardware and software to mimic biological systems.
            DARPA says that a prototype could be tested by troops within three years. Technologies to be used in the device range from flat-field wide-angle optics to advanced electroencephalograms, or EEGs, to rapidly recognize brainwave signatures.
            Paul Hasler, a faculty researcher in the Georgia Electronic Design Center (GEDC) and an associate professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, will lead a Georgia Tech team that will participate in developing the intelligent-binoculars device.
            Hasler said that an effort to use neural computation to "emulate the brain's visual cortex" might create sensors that could, like the brain, scan across a wide field of view and "figure out what's interesting to look at."
            According to DARPA, this advanced model of binoculars is inspired by the binoculars that Luke Skywalker used in Star Wars.