By Anna Gale Fueled
While just about every other tech vendor is working on the latest in fitness wearables, a new type of product is being tested by neurological science company Emotiv. Focusing on the power of the brain, Emotiv is working on a wearable headband device that’s much more attractive than Google Glass and has a significantly more impressive functionality than… well, anything else on the market.
The Emotiv headband scans your brain activity using an EEG that reads signals in different areas of your brain and translates them to movement as well as other tangible actions. The device gathers these cues and deciphers them using Emotiv’s brain-computer interface which differentiates between emotion, interest, action and numerous other categorized brain activities.
In a video for TechCrunch TV, correspondent Sarah Buhr met with Tan Le from Emotiv for a real-life demo of what the actual process is like. For a very basic example Tan showed Sarah how she was able to move a toy car using only the Emotiv headband and the will of her own brain to get the desired result. In that same line of thinking Tan and Sarah discussed other applications and potential uses for the software that inspired us to come up with a few of our own.
Gaming is one of the easiest and most exciting uses to jump to for a number of reasons. Ever since the early ’90s and right on up to present day with the Nintendo Wii and Xbox Kinect, we’ve all been fascinated with the idea of virtual reality, and being able to control a character in a game with our bodies for more realistic movements, as opposed to presets from a game controller. Now, that may all be possible by simply thinking of the moves you want your character to make and willing it to do so.
A line of thought-powered cleaning robots or tools may be just what we need to add a fifth dimension to our already growing need to be constantly getting multiple things done at once. Now, instead of just worrying about all the cleaning you need to be doing while you’re finishing that spreadsheet at home, you could focus those energies into guiding the little bots around your house to doing it while you plug happily away on a task that requires much less of your attention.
The most worthy cause is probably one that we could all agree on, and that’s the application of this type of software to a line of handicapped limbs. This is yet another use that has been illustrated before in numerous movies where someone is once again given the ability to walk at the hands of a computer device controlled by their thoughts. Robotic arms and legs could be the next big innovation in prosthetics that bring us even closer to having the real thing back.
It was discussed that Emotiv is still very much on the ground floor of what could be an astounding existence in the neurotech field, but with the potential that’s there, we can firmly say we’ve been so interested in seeing someone make a toy car move.