Behold The Next Generation VR Technology: Part 6 — Brain Interface
Sceptics say current VR headsets are clunky, heavy, uncomfortable diving masks that won’t make their way to people’s homes. Well, I agree, but with one significant exception — the technology is moving lightning fast.
In less than 2 years of VR-consumer-version era headsets have become completely wireless, field of view doubled, and the display resolution tripled.
In fact, VR technologies are evolving much faster than consumer versions of headsets can be released.
In the series of weekly articles called “Behold The Next Generation VR Technology” I will guide you through the world of the latest and most promising tech that will finally make VR the next computing platform.
Mostly on the early stage of development, all this tech will be implemented in consumer version headsets during the next 10 years. Some sooner, some later.
I divided this series into parts — one part for every vital aspect of VR technology. This one is about:
Brain Interface
All my life I wanted to have telekinetic powers. Who didn’t? When I was a child I even had dreams in which I lifted things without touching them, with my mind only. And it was so real. Until I woke up.
Years passed, and we still cannot summon toilet paper from the bathroom cabinet using thoughts no matter how hard we try. However, we can do it in VR.
One of the companies working on such extrasensory technology is Neurable. They created a device that attaches to HTC Vive like a Deluxe Audio Strap. However, it’s not designed to make playing games more comfortable. It needs access to your scalp.
But don’t be afraid. Although it may look like a huge helmet that can be found somewhere in Doc’s lab (“Back to the Future”), at its core is a completely innocuous technology called EEG or Electroencephalography.
It’s an old noninvasive(requiring no surgery) monitoring technology used by doctors all over the world that “listens” to your brain’s activity. I bet almost everyone had EEG test at least once in their life. Remember a doctor put a strange net with sensors on your head? That was EEG.
Generally, this tech is used to diagnose, for example, epilepsy, sleep disorders or other abnormalities. It also can show whether you are focused, stressed or relaxed.
And Neurable is doing exactly that. Their device has six dry-electrode EEG sensors that have to be in touch with skin to measure electric activity in the brain caused by the flow of electric currents through neurons.
Can it read minds? No. And to be honest, the output is nothing breathtaking:
Looks like noise, right? And partly it is. The trick is to decode that signal into the something specific. Like a will to press a button.
And that’s where machine learning comes in. Instead of analyzing all the data manually Neurable uses machine learning algorithms to classify EEG signals in real time.
By combining these algorithms with neuroscience insights, it allows devs to understand player’s intentions. Therefore, they already can create experiences that let you select menu items, move objects, and even input text using only your brain activity. Even without nose bleeding.
LOOXID LABS went a bit further. They created their own mobile HMD not only with EEG sensors but they also implemented eye-tracking in it.
Now when you look at something in VR its analytical system knows how you feel about it.
The coolest and at the same time the creepiest part is that this tech can analyze your feelings much more accurate than you can. Because you know, you can fool yourself or other people, but you can’t fool the EEG sensor. It’s like undergoing a lie detector test after taking the truth serum.
Of course, this technology immediately raises privacy concerns. How can we be sure that our thoughts won’t leak to another Cambridge Analytica? Well, I think we’ll see.
As you already understood this tech is far from being super accurate and can’t literally read your mind. But it’s the only mind-reading tech to date that is both cheap and mobile.
Or is it? It turns out there’s one more promising technology on its way. It’s an Infrared scanner by the startup called Openwater.
The gadget projects Infrared light(not visible to the human eye) up to six inches deep into the body and analyzes how it bounces back. By doing that it generates a map of what’s inside.
But the crazy part is the resolution of such scan. Openwater claims it’s in microns! It is so unbelievably high, so this device might be able to generate a neuron map of your brain.
That is what they say about it:
We use an utterly unconventional approach that enables us to leapfrog MRI technology by using the scattering of the body or the brain itself to focus infrared light to scan the brain or body bit by bit or voxel by voxel.
This technology enables continuous scanning of the body and brain in the form of a true wearable the size of a ski-hat or bandage. The implications of this architecture are profound for healthcare and can even enable communication with thought alone (as has been well documented by neuroscientists using the room size MRI scanners).
They are going to release a very limited number of prototypes to early access partners in a year.
However, there are also much more radical steps are being made. Recently the founder of Oculus — Palmer Luckey — confessed he is experimenting with VR implants:
This is one of the things I’m experimenting with, is virtual reality implants that are able to do stimulation into the nervous system to provide a sense of touch and to allow you to move around in virtual reality without actually moving. But even if you do that I think that still we will wear HMDs because the optic nerve, the link from the eye to the brain, is so much information, so high bandwidth, that I don’t think implants are a better way to do it than very good HMDs.
Came from the movie screen this tech will very likely make its way to consumer HMDs in the next 10 years. At least in the EEG form.
While for the mass VR users it’s more a vitamin, than a painkiller, it is going to enhance the control in VR for disabled people in a big way. It will also become an ultimate analytics tool for devs, advertisers, researchers, and physicians.
To read other’s thoughts is a great power. But let’s not forget Uncle Ben’s wisdom: “Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.”
