Emotiv Systems
Encyclopedia
Emotiv Systems is an Australian electronics company developing brain–computer interfaces based on electroencephalography
(EEG) technology. The company was founded in 2003 by four scientists and executives: neuroscientist Professor Allan Snyder
, chip-designer Neil Weste
, and technology entrepreneurs Tan Le
(B. Comm. in 1998 from Monash University) and Nam Do.
Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is Geoffrey MacKellar.
Emotiv System's only current product is the Emotiv EPOC, a $300 peripheral for gaming on Windows
PCs. The device is purchasable on their official website with a price tag of US$299. Emotiv Systems claims the headset will make it possible for games to be controlled and influenced by the player's mind, and facial expressions. It connects wirelessly with the PC, and may in the future work on other game platforms such as consoles. The Epoc was designed by a Emotiv Systems in conjunction with the Sydney based Industrial Design consultancy 4design. For compatibility with non-compliant software EmoKey would be provided in order to bind commands to keys or combinations thereof transforming the device into an HID
.
features and a multiple of NeuroSky's
single electrode). It also has a two-axis gyro for measuring head rotation.
The headset must first be "trained" to recognize what kind of neural activity equates to a specific bodily action. It can measure four categories of inputs, but some users say it mainly measures facial expressions:
EPOC can be used to get EEG data (the raw electricity measurements), with the Python Emokit without the need for EPOC's proprietary software, Research, Research Plus or Enterprise Plus SDK licenses ($750, $2,500 and $7,500 respectively).
The Emotiv EPOC will ship with a game by Demiurge Studios
, previously called "The Game", built on the Unity3D. Videos of portions of the game have been shown at conferences and in media interviews. The game involves a first person view of the user walking around a virtual environment, with many different activities at different locations. The sky changes color according to the mood of the player. Demonstrated activities in the game include pushing and rotating giant stone structures into the shape of stone henge
, then raising a temple from below the ground; levitating a large rock and some smaller ones; repairing a bridge; bending a tree; and scaring away glowing spirits with scary facial expressions.
The EPOC also includes "EmoKey" software used to emulate keystrokes based on combinations of thoughts, feelings, and facial expressions. Any EPOC detection can be paired with keystrokes or string of keystrokes through a simple user interface by the end user. Future versions will also emulate the mouse based on the gyros. This software allows most existing games, instant messaging programs, and other software to be controlled with the headset.
There is also a planned web site known as "Emortal", for listening to music, viewing photos, and other activities, modified based on what the user is thinking and feeling.
Another product is the Emotiv Control Panel, also seen in many videos, which allows users to train the various thoughts, such as "push" and "disappear", and test them on a floating, bobbing, cube. It also allows users to view their emotional state, such as "excitement", on a graph. It has a 2D blue avatar that allows the user to view their own facial expressions, and adjust the sensitivity of those detections.
A free of charge SDK (called SDK Lite) is also available for download from the Emotiv website. It includes software to emulate the Emotiv EPOC output for developers who do not have one of the headsets.
The SDKs currently only support Microsoft Windows
, but a Linux
-version is in development.
Emokit is an open-source and cross-platform Python library for reading out sensor data from the EPOC by Cody Brocious
. It was built by reverse-engineering the encrypted protocol.
. To do so, the wearer did hand motions such as pushing and pulling to restore Stonehenge.
In July 2010, Tan Le gave a demo of the headset at a TED conference
.
Electroencephalography
Electroencephalography is the recording of electrical activity along the scalp. EEG measures voltage fluctuations resulting from ionic current flows within the neurons of the brain...
(EEG) technology. The company was founded in 2003 by four scientists and executives: neuroscientist Professor Allan Snyder
Allan Snyder
Allan Whitenack Snyder is the director of the Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney, Australia where he also holds the 150th Anniversary Chair of Science and the Mind...
, chip-designer Neil Weste
Neil Weste
Neil H. E. Weste , is an Australian inventor and engineer, noted for having designed a 2-chip wireless LAN implementation and for authoring the textbook Principles of CMOS VLSI Design. He has worked in many aspects of integrated-circuit design and was a co-founder of Radiata...
, and technology entrepreneurs Tan Le
Tan Le
Tan Le , a Vietnamese-Australian telecommunications entrepreneur, is a co-Founder of Emotiv. She was named the 1998 Young Australian of the Year....
(B. Comm. in 1998 from Monash University) and Nam Do.
Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is Geoffrey MacKellar.
Emotiv EPOC
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
PCs. The device is purchasable on their official website with a price tag of US$299. Emotiv Systems claims the headset will make it possible for games to be controlled and influenced by the player's mind, and facial expressions. It connects wirelessly with the PC, and may in the future work on other game platforms such as consoles. The Epoc was designed by a Emotiv Systems in conjunction with the Sydney based Industrial Design consultancy 4design. For compatibility with non-compliant software EmoKey would be provided in order to bind commands to keys or combinations thereof transforming the device into an HID
Human interface device
A human interface device or HID is a type of computer device that interacts directly with, and most often takes input from, humans and may deliver output to humans. The term "HID" most commonly refers to the USB-HID specification. The term was coined by Mike Van Flandern of Microsoft when he...
.
Inputs
The EPOC has 14 electrodes (compared to the 19 electrodes of a standard medical EEG, and the 3 of OCZ's NIANeural Impulse Actuator
The Neural Impulse Actuator is a brain–computer interface device developed by OCZ Technology. BCI devices attempt to move away from the classic input devices like keyboard and mouse and instead read electrical activity from the head, preferably the EEG...
features and a multiple of NeuroSky's
NeuroSky
NeuroSky, Inc. is a manufacturer of Brain-Computer Interface technologies for consumer product applications. It was founded in 2004 and is a Silicon Valley based company. The company claims that their mission is to make BCI technology available to any industry...
single electrode). It also has a two-axis gyro for measuring head rotation.
The headset must first be "trained" to recognize what kind of neural activity equates to a specific bodily action. It can measure four categories of inputs, but some users say it mainly measures facial expressions:
- Conscious thoughts (Cognitiv suite): Imagining 12 kinds of movement- those were in the demo application 6 directions (left, right, up, down, forward, and "zoom") and 6 rotations ([anti-]clockwise rotation, turn left and right, and sway backward and forward)- plus 1 other visualization ("disappear") that can be detected in µ rhythms. While the current driver may only be able to listen for any 4 of these at a time, the degrees of freedom are larger than a joystick's 2 df. Ideomotor responsesIdeo motor responseThe ideo-motor response , often abbreviated to IMR, is a concept in hypnosis and psychological research. It is derived from the terms 'ideo' and 'motor'...
or the much stronger EMG currents aside, these thought Because of the complex detection algorithms involved, there is a slight lag in detecting thoughts. However, the technology may still be useful in a support role like calling up a minimap or radar in a FPSFirst-person shooterFirst-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
game. - Emotions (Affectiv suite): "Excitement", "Engagement/Boredom", "Meditation", and "Frustration" can currently be measured. Emotiv admits that the names may not perfectly reflect exactly what the emotion is, and says that they may be renamed before market launch.
- Facial expressions (Expressiv suite): Individual eyelid and eyebrow positions, eye position in the horizontal plane, smiling, laughing, clenching, and smirking can currently be detected. Other expressions may be added prior to release. The expressions are detected by the EEG sensors picking up signals to facial muscles, rather than by reading brainwaves. Unlike reading mental activity, these detections are very fast (10ms) conveying a decisive advantage and rendering them suitable for fast paced games in the FPS genre.
- Head rotation: The angular velocity of one's head can be measured in the yaw and pitch (but not roll) directions. This is detected by gyros, and isn't related to the EEG features.
EPOC can be used to get EEG data (the raw electricity measurements), with the Python Emokit without the need for EPOC's proprietary software, Research, Research Plus or Enterprise Plus SDK licenses ($750, $2,500 and $7,500 respectively).
Software
Demiurge Studios
Demiurge Studios is an American video game developer company, founded in 2002 by Albert Reed, Chris Linder and Tom Lin. It is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts...
, previously called "The Game", built on the Unity3D. Videos of portions of the game have been shown at conferences and in media interviews. The game involves a first person view of the user walking around a virtual environment, with many different activities at different locations. The sky changes color according to the mood of the player. Demonstrated activities in the game include pushing and rotating giant stone structures into the shape of stone henge
Henge
There are three related types of Neolithic earthwork which are all sometimes loosely called henges. The essential characteristic of all three types is that they feature a ring bank and ditch but with the ditch inside the bank rather than outside...
, then raising a temple from below the ground; levitating a large rock and some smaller ones; repairing a bridge; bending a tree; and scaring away glowing spirits with scary facial expressions.
The EPOC also includes "EmoKey" software used to emulate keystrokes based on combinations of thoughts, feelings, and facial expressions. Any EPOC detection can be paired with keystrokes or string of keystrokes through a simple user interface by the end user. Future versions will also emulate the mouse based on the gyros. This software allows most existing games, instant messaging programs, and other software to be controlled with the headset.
There is also a planned web site known as "Emortal", for listening to music, viewing photos, and other activities, modified based on what the user is thinking and feeling.
Another product is the Emotiv Control Panel, also seen in many videos, which allows users to train the various thoughts, such as "push" and "disappear", and test them on a floating, bobbing, cube. It also allows users to view their emotional state, such as "excitement", on a graph. It has a 2D blue avatar that allows the user to view their own facial expressions, and adjust the sensitivity of those detections.
SDK
The company provides several software development kits, which includes a headset, applications and libraries used for interfacing with the headset, with varying limitations and pricing.A free of charge SDK (called SDK Lite) is also available for download from the Emotiv website. It includes software to emulate the Emotiv EPOC output for developers who do not have one of the headsets.
The SDKs currently only support Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, but a Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
-version is in development.
Emokit is an open-source and cross-platform Python library for reading out sensor data from the EPOC by Cody Brocious
Cody Brocious
-Biography:Cody William Brocious was born in Waukegan, Illinois, the son of a Naval Drug and Alcohol counselor. He moved to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania at the age of 3 and became interested in computing by the age of 4...
. It was built by reverse-engineering the encrypted protocol.
Marketing
At the Game Developers Conference 2008, in San Francisco an Emotiv headset was among the new video game input devices there. The demo played with the Emotiv was a puzzle where the player rebuilds StonehengeStonehenge
Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument located in the English county of Wiltshire, about west of Amesbury and north of Salisbury. One of the most famous sites in the world, Stonehenge is composed of a circular setting of large standing stones set within earthworks...
. To do so, the wearer did hand motions such as pushing and pulling to restore Stonehenge.
In July 2010, Tan Le gave a demo of the headset at a TED conference
TED (conference)
TED is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading"....
.
Competitors
For a comparison with other competing devices, see Comparison of consumer brain–computer interfaces.External links
- Emotiv Wiki
- Emokit open source SDK
- Tan Le: A headset that reads your thoughts
Articles
- Brain control headset for gamers, By Darren Waters, 20 February 2008, BBC News
- Reality Bites -- Emotiv -- Mind Reading Device, By David H. Freedman, Dec 1, 2008, Inc. Magazine profile
- Mind control: How a £200 headset is redefining brain-computing interaction, by Neal Pollack, 29 November 2010, Wired UK
- Emotiv EPOC EEG Headset Hacked