control robot with brain waves for $300

[Admin]

So, who wants to remote control your robot with your thoughts?

http://www.overclock3d.net/news.php?/input_devices/ocz_prepares_neural_impulse_actuator_for_shipping_next_week/1

[airman00]

OMG!!!!

[pomprocker]

does it work on women too?

[AndrewM]

So when should we be expecting to see the NIA interface for the AXON?

[awally88]

One fo the final year projects Mech Eng from 2006 was actually a robot controlled in this way. I never got a go at it but you wear a massive headpiece which reads the potentials across your scalp. This was input to a laptop which sent signals to a robot which would go forwards backwards or turn depending on what you were thinking. It was very impressive to see even though it didn't work that well all of the time due to not sensitive enough equipment.

[Admin]

Yea I actually got to control a computer once with my brainwaves . . . they put all this gel in your hair then put this cap on. They also put these thingies on your face that itch a lot . . .

It was back in the day when I was totally broke and volunteered myself as a guinea pig for money . . . lol . . .

I have a pic of me wearing the brain cap thingy, I'll post it some day . . .

[Admin]

The insides:
http://www.anandtech.com/Gallery.aspx?id=123

They apparently made mistakes on the PCB . . . lots of jumper wires, hehe . . .

[benji]

yea this is not hard though,,
this things that they put on your head are called electrodes,, they interpret the biological voltages and currents(ions) in your head into electrical voltages and currents(electrons)
they put a gel between the electrode and your head to make the chemical process easier as the Gel has cations of the same material as the electrode
,,i did study this in a subject about medical instruments , the instrument is called EEG
this machine shows the electrical waves in your brain,, so once you got em you just input them into a controller that handles this waves according to your program(means the way u like) you can use em to use you computer ,, to drive a robot ,,,,etc

[alovon]

Sounds pretty cool. I wonder if you could use it on cats. see what they would do with a pc... lol

[ishka]

Wow ! Even if this work half as easily as they say 
Because as you perhaps don't know ( for once I'm more "expert" than average on this forum ;-) just got my neurology exam past Friday ), the potential across all the layers between brain and the skin is a few microvolt ! So just move your eyes and your EEG is false. Every muscle on your face ( there's many) can disturb the EEG as they're just under skin and are far more synchronized. Even your power supply is a noise source.
So the difficulty is to measure potential with as few noise as possible, because you'll need to amplify your data enough to be usable.That's why you needed to put so much gel between the electrode and your skin ;-).
Then comes the problem of interpretation ( graphical for standard EEG but different here ). I don't know how they  get so much action control possible with this simple headband ( in the picture it seems to get only 3 electrodes ). In the article they talk about Autonomous Nervous System and muscles too, but I really can't figured what ANS can do here. And it seems there's nothing that measure EMG ( electromyography).

If you get any feedback on how it really work ( practical I mean )plz tell us, I'm rather curious ;-).

PS : find this page in English about EEG measurement ( electronically speaking) Electrophysiology