We often look at news out of the research community and think, “we could build that.” But the latest brain-machine interface from an international team including the Georgia Institute of Technology actually scares us. It uses an array of tiny needles that penetrate the skin but remain too small for your nerves to detect. Right. We assume they need to be sterile but either way, we don’t really want to build a pin grid array to attach to your brain.
It seems the soft device is comfortable and since it is very lightweight it doesn’t suffer from noise if the user blinks or otherwise moves. Looking at the picture of the electrodes, they look awfully pointy, but we assume that’s magnified quite a few times, since the post mentions they are not visible to the naked eye.
By using machine learning, people were able to control virtual reality tasks with high accuracy — about 93%. Controlling things via brainwaves is nothing new, but the challenge has always been getting an easy and robust way to read the brainwaves to begin with. Obviously, this kind of technology could really help adaptive technology where using traditional control methods isn’t feasible.
We’ve seen brain control used to drive a car. We’ve even seen an Arduino get in on the act.
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
