What Controlled Robots of Pacific Rim?

In the movie Pacific Rim, humans build giant robots to fight enormous monsters that emerge from the ocean depths. Only they're not strictly robots: Each enormous machine is controlled by the brains of two pilots, since the mind of a single pilots can't properly control something so gigantic. It turns out that idea isn't as far-fetched as the rest of the movie.

The movie uses the dual-pilot interface as a source of character conflict and growth as the bond it creates between the two people links their minds in an intimate way. The more compatible the two minds are, the better the link, and the more effective the machines are at kicking giant monster butt.

Using minds to control machines is already a reality. Today's brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) allow people to perform some basic tasks such as moving a mouse, or even typing, just by thinking. The technology is based on the well-known medical technique electroencephalography, although today's applications comparatively crude to the fast, real-time movements shown in Pacific Rim.

As the movie depicts, a cooperative link could yield better results, and IEEE Spectrum found two studies that point in that direction. A study from the University of Essex showed that people were much more effective at controlling a simulated spaceship through a BCI when they were paired with a collaborator. Since working with a BMI is an "intense" experience, lapses in attention are compensated by the other person, Discovery reported.

The other study, published in the journal PLoS One, went beyond two-person control and looked at the effect of having groups of 5, 10, 15 and 20 people cooperate in controlling a BCI. The results showed substantial improvement in both the response time and the accuracy of a movement by the machine.

So are collectively controlled giant robots in our future? Probably not, but a collective BCI could lead to faster and better collaboration with digital tasks such as analyzing databases, or even gaming. But if giant monsters begin leveling cities, who knows?