Won't it be fantastic if we could have our phone call someone or open and start our cars by merely thinking about it? The technology that would allow this to happen is called Brain Computer Interface or BCI. And there is a race on for bringing BCI devices to the market.The interface between humans and computers has evolved as the computers themselves have. The traditional way of interacting with the computer is by using the mouse and keyboard.
These days it tends to be wireless or touch screen though instead of being wired. Voice-actuation technologies are already in commercial use. There is commercial voice-to-text software that can eventually replace the typing of one's documents. The calibration of the device to understand one's voice, 100 per cent of the time, still poses some challenges.
Voice-actuated devices are being employed in the automobile and mobile phone industries with success. The technology is a rapidly evolving one, as software is being developed to be able to filter out extraneous and background noises that make word recognition difficult. Humans have the capacity to focus on a particular sound or sounds in noisy environments. For voice-recognition technology to become more widespread, it must be able to function also in noisy environments.
Recent mobile devices have started incorporating eye movements to control certain features. The device can sense when you are looking at it. One application is that if you are watching video, for instance, and you look away for a pre-set time period, the video stops. Again the principle here is similar to the screen-saver mode of operation in which if you are not using the device the screen goes to sleep.
Both voice- and eye-movement technology makes the use of mobile easier and requires the acquisition of fewer skills like typing. The technologies utilise our everyday natural actions like speaking and looking. The development of BCI technology is taking this process to the next natural level.
Thoughts precede actions as we all know and hence it would be more efficient, in terms of time and ease, to control devices directly with our thoughts as opposed to using our bodies as the intermediary between our thoughts and the computer or mobile phone.
BCI research has been around for decades and was driven by medical applications for the control of prosthetics and devices like wheel chairs by quadriplegics. Significant advances have been made in this area but the drawback has been the use of invasive surgery to implant electrodes in the brain in order to enhance the electrical activity being generated in the brain by the thought processes.
The focus is now on non-evasive electrodes contained in a headset but these still need to be in good contact with skull and thus wetting them with saline or similar solutions is required. Dry-connection head sets are available but they are not as effective as the wet ones.
The technology has progressed to the level where now there are commercial devices available that incorporate EEG-based headsets. Some also include software development kits for the R&D efforts to produce specific applications like mood recognition. This can only help to spur the growth of the technology as it has done for the tablet and smart phone technology.
BCI technology is not yet a full-fledged commercial one but this is expected to change soon. The time from idea to realisation, from the lab to the market, has been drastically reduced and thus one expects to see a surge of BCI applications and technologies in the near term as the potential usage is as wide as human endeavour itself. The BCI revolution will impact fields ranging from entertainment to athletics, from medicine to warfare.
Prakash Persad
prakash.persad@yahoo.com