BCI

California Institute of Technology (Caltech) engineers have developed a robotic device able to act as a brain-computer interface. This is the 'first robotic approach to establishing an interface between computers and the brain by positioning electrodes in neural tissue.'

It looks like an ordinary baseball cap. But when you put it on, the cap detects and analyzes the electroencephalogram (EEG) signals from your brain. It can even tell you if you’re getting too sleepy when driving based on your brain wave patterns. Similar technology could also allow you to control home electronics such as TVs, computers, and air conditioners, all by just thinking about them.

What will human-computer Interaction (HCI) be like in the year 2020? That's the focus of a Microsoft Research report, "Being Human: Human-Computer Interaction in the year 2020," just released.

Earlier this year in a lab at Duke University, in Durham, N.C., a clever, raisin-gobbling ­monkey named Idoya made a robot move in Japan—just by thinking. And she wasn’t alone. She joined ranks with, among others, a ­paraplegic man who recently used his brain to move a cursor around a computer screen.

Although the brain-computer metaphor has served cognitive psychology well, research in cognitive neuroscience has revealed many important differences between brains and computers.

A first-generation commercial brain-computer interface (BCI) is being released by Emotiv Systems later this year. What does the future hold for BCI? By 2050, and likely sooner, you will be able to buy a BCI device that records all your dreams in their entirety.

"Augmented Cognition," the Darpa program to build computer interfaces that adapt to their users' brains, has officially run its course. But efforts to build mind-reading PCs continue throughout the military establishment.

In John Varley's upcoming scifi novel Rolling Thunder, everyone has a brain implant that lets them google information constantly. And many futurists are saying this technology will become a reality long before we colonize Mars. The question isn't whether we'll have google brain implants (or the futuristic search engine equivalent), but how we'll handle them. What exactly would be the plusses and minuses of being able to google information instantaneously in your head, without anybody knowing you're doing it?

Last night a company called Emotiv showed off its latest generation BCI (that's brain-computer interface) controller to a bunch of nerds from the Game Developer Conference -- including our sister site Kotaku's brave and fearless Brian Crecente. Basically, you stick this helmet on your head and control what's on screen via brain-generated electricity that's picked up by EEG sensors.

With a sheet of electrodes placed over the brain, people can quickly learn to move a cursor around a computer screen using their thoughts. Early trials suggest that this new procedure could overtake more established brain-computer interfaces (BCIs).