Future Toys - Mind Controlled Interfaces

BRAIN CONTROLLED INTERFACES:

As people get their first taste of voice-controlled home robots and motion-based virtual realities, a quiet swath of technologists are thinking big picture about what comes after that. The answer has major implications for the way we’ll interact with our devices in the near future.

A new method of interacting with your everyday devices is to control them with your brain. this idea has picked up pace after some recent events in tech industry and the pioneer of producing such systems which allow us to control devices using brain is NEURABLE. 

This boston based startup  which was recently granted $2 million by Ann Arbor-to-Cambridge transplant in a seed round led by Brian Shin of BOSS Syndicate, a Boston-based alliance of regionally focused angel investors. Other investors include PJC, Loup Ventures and NXT Ventures. Previously, the company took home more than $400,000 after bagging the second-place prize at the Rice Business Plan Competition.

Unlike other neuro-startups like Interaxon’s Muse and Thync , Neurable has no intention to build its own hardware, instead relying on readily available electroencephalography (EEG) devices, which usually resemble a cap or a headband. Equipped with multiple sensors that can detect and map electrical activity in the brain.

Brain Controlled Robot Interface Employs Artificial Intelligence to Bridge Communication Gap

EEG headsets record neural activity which can then be interpreted by custom software and translated into an output. Such a system is known as a brain computer interface, or BCI. The BCI's are best known for their applications for people with severe disabilities, like ALS and other neuromuscular conditions. The problem is that most of these systems are really slow; it can take 20 seconds for a wearer to execute a simple action, like choosing one of two symbols on a screen.

Neurable’s core innovation is a machine learning method that could cut down the processing wait so that user selection happens in real time. The same new analysis approach will also tackle the BCI signal to noise issue, amplifying the quality of the data to yield a more robust data set.

Instead of measuring specific brainwaves, Neurable’s software is powered by what Alcaide calls a “brain shape.” Measuring this shape — a pattern of responsive brain activity known as an event-related potential — is a way to gauge if a stimulus or other kind of event is important to the user. This brain imaging notion, roughly an observation of cause and effect, has actually been around in some form for at least 40 years.

“Our vision is to make this the standard human interaction platform for any hardware or software device,” Ramses Alcaide - one of the founders of neurable - said in an interview. “So people can walk into their homes or their offices and take control of their devices using a combination of their augmented reality systems and their brain activity.”. Alcaide said. “In the long game, we want to become that piece of software that runs on every hardware and software application that allows you to interpret brain activity."

The Helping Hand - Bionic Arm now a Reality

Future of Human Augmentation:

Artificial augmentation of humans is the core flash-point between the different factions in the Sci-Fi game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, coming on August 23. But mechanically augmented humans aren’t science fiction anymore.

Robotics startup "Open Bionics" has created an artificial arm based on the augmented human character, Adam Jensen, in "Deus Ex". It’s part of a bigger merchandising plan to bring the universe of Deus Ex to life. The prosthetic arm and hand operate via remote control, using Razer’s Stargazer camera and motion-tracking technology. Intel has also helped.

Eidos Montreal, the studio making the game, began working a while ago with its partners to bring Deus Ex-inspired augmentations to life. They’re bridging the gap between fiction and reality with technologies such as 3D printing, scanning, bionics, and motion sensing.

“Our friends kept telling us to make something with Open Bionics in real life,” said Sacha Ramtohul, community manager at Eidos Montreal, in an interview with "GamesBeat". “We got together last year to start on it. Open Bionics is still working on the technology.”

They are creating affordable 3D-printed bionic hands that could work for people who need them. The “Augmented Future” initiative is eerily close the story line of Deus Ex. Except it is happening even sooner than the original game creators predicted. In the game, the big year is 2027, but at 2017, They are even farther along than anticipated. But this “Trans-human” project definitely a case of life imitating art.

The Razer “Stargazer” camera and a motion tracking technology will help to bring this bionic arm initiative to a virtual setting, allowing people to digitally ‘try on’ the arm at events, effectively enabling a real-time demonstration of how the arm would look and move if it they were actually using it.



The first arms are expected to debut in 2017. The Deus Ex team started working on the project in 2015 with Open Bionics. Open Bionics is based at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, the biggest robotics lab in Europe. The company’s arms tend to be cheaper than other bionic limbs because they are based on 3D-printed designs. So, almost every disabled person will now be able to interact again. And the bionic arm may not feel like real thing but it is a lot better than nothing..