Boston-based startup Neurable is
focused on deciphering brain activity to determine a person’s intention,
particularly in virtual and augmented reality. The company uses dry electrodes
to record brain activity via electroencephalography (EEG), then software
analyzes the signal and determines the action that should occur. Neurable,
which raised $2 million in venture funding late last year, is still in the
early stages: its demo hardware looks like a bunch of electrodes attached to
straps that span a user’s head, worn along with an HTC Vive virtual-reality
headset. Unlike the headset, Neurable’s contraption is wireless—it sends data
to a computer via Bluetooth. The startup expects to offer software tools for
game development later this year, and it isn’t planning to build its own
hardware; rather, Neurable hopes companies will be making headsets with sensors
to support its technology in the next several years.
Success may be a long shot. No
method of interaction has come close to supplanting the physical devices we
typically use to control digital experiences—handheld controllers, mouse,
keyboard, touch screen. And brain-computer interfaces in particular can be clunky,
slow, and prone to errors. But virtual and augmented reality are still in such
early stages that the ways we use them aren’t yet entrenched, and they’re
vastly different from other technologies. In an early demo of a VR game,
actions—such as picking an item of food off a table and throwing it at a
goblin—are controlled by analyzing brain activity to decipher intent. And while
it’s nothing new to track brain activity via EEG and look for a particular
signal that occurs when a user is trying to select something, the company says
it has figured out how to reduce noise and use the signals more quickly than
has been done in the past.
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