Quadriplegic woman flies F-35 simulator using only her thoughts

Nothing can stop Jan Scheuermann.

A quadriplegic patient in an experimental Pentagon robotics program, Schuermann has electrodes implanted on her brain that allow her to control a robotic arm. Schuermann, 55, recently used the power of her thoughts to fly an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet simulator.

Arati Prabhakar, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, announced Schuermann's progress at the first annual Future of War conference last week, Defense Tech reports. Prabhakar said Schuermann's brain has tolerated the implants "very well."

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The implants are on Schuermann's left motor cortex, Defense Tech explains, which allows her to control both the right-handed and left-handed versions of the robotic arm. Once she got the hang of controlling the arm, Schuermann asked if she could control the fighter jet simulator.

"Instead of thinking about controlling a joystick, which is what our ace pilots do when they're driving this thing, Jan's thinking about controlling the airplane directly," Prabhakar told Defense Tech. "For someone who's never flown — she's not a pilot in real life — she's flying that simulator directly from her neural signaling."

Prabhakar acknowledged that the research is still "far from becoming reality," but it could have huge implications for patient restoration and neural signaling projects in the future.