Neurointerface Emotiv Insight - collected $ 1,500,000 on Kickstarter

In the coming hours, the Kickstarter campaign will complete the fundraising, which has already exceeded one and a half million dollars, reaching all three additional goals!

1 000 000 $

The first additional goal was a million dollars. For this sum, the designers promised to develop and add to the device a 6-axis inertial sensor (roll, pitch, yaw, vertical, lateral, longitudinal acceleration):

• 3-axis gyroscope (roll, pitch, yaw) 250/500 degrees per second per axis
• 3-axis accelerometer (vertical, lateral, longitudinal acceleration) 2g / 8g

The resolution of the range of the scale of the received data can be selected using the API (low resolution - 8 bits, high - 12).
And all this without increasing the cost of the device for the end user.

Insight Extender and $ 1,250,000

Insight Extender is an additional external battery that allows you to increase the time of the neural interface by 12 hours, i.e. total work time will be 16 hours.

The battery is attached with a clip to the clothes and connected with a USB cable to the device. In addition to the charging and connecting indicator, there are five red / orange / green LEDs on the battery that display the quality of the Bluetooth signal, which would be much more convenient than if such indicators were located on the device itself. Insight Extender can also be connected to both a USB port and a neural interface simultaneously, allowing it to work and charge simultaneously. Without a battery, this is impossible, because for security reasons, when connecting Emotiv Insight via USB to a computer, the neural interface stopped working so that the user would not be shocked due to a possible port malfunction.
The cost of such a battery is $ 100, but the most loyal sponsors will get it for free:
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After collecting $ 1.25 million, the developers added two more innovations to it:
1. The connector for the SD card, to which you can record the data stream from the interface, while there is no connection with a computer or smartphone.
2. An isolated optoelectronic TTL input channel to which short pulses can be sent. Upon receipt of these pulses, the neural interface will leave labels on the EEG, which will make it much easier to determine the time for receiving the stimuli and the response to them on the EEG.

1 500 000 $

Using a 6-axis accelerometer, you can determine the relative angles of rotation, but because of the accumulating error, this technology has its limitations. To determine the absolute position of the object in space, it was decided to add a 3-axis magnetometer to the device.

Stealth modification

Also developed another color modification of the device.

Scope of application

Unfortunately, the accuracy of the data obtained is significantly less, the one that can be obtained using medical encephalographs, and therefore using Emotiv Insight as a cheap replacement for medical equipment will not work.

Emotiv Insight + WigWag

Two projects presented at Kikstarter agreed on mutual integration. About startup WigWag there is already a detailed article on Habré. However, I remind you that this is a project of a smart home.

They offer not just a set of sensors and actuators, but also a whole infrastructure that is compatible with many of the already existing intelligent electrical appliances, and, more importantly, open to modifications and friendly to both ordinary users and programmers and hackers.

WigWag allows you to create "rules", like IFTTT recipes, that can control any device based on information from sensors or from the Internet. These can be WigWag sensors and actuators, Internet services, Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Belkin WeMo, Philips Hue, and any other protocols that support IP, RS-232, 6loWPAN, Bluetooth and Zigbee. Moreover, it is possible to create rules not only through a graphical interface, but also in JavaScript, using the DeviceJS runtime, which WigWag developers are positioning as a way to write applications for a smart home in the same way as writing applications for the Web.

One of these sensors can be your brain. Having a WigWag App in your pocket and connecting it via Bluetooth to Emotiv Insight, you can send control commands “from anywhere in the world” (but of course Wi-Fi or 3G should be at that point, EDGE will work at worst). Now you can not worry about whether you turned off the light, gas or water, but just mentally turn them off ... but something I was dreaming. In general, the collection of data on the location of the user, his mental teams, mood and emotional state, opens up opportunities for creating a smart home of the new generation. This is especially true for the elderly and disabled.

Thought teams

How will work with this device? It all starts with a user profile, which stores all the information related to how you use the neural interface, calibration and training data. The profile stores data about your facial expression, normal condition, performance, and mental signatures for mental commands. You can have an unlimited number of profiles for various purposes.
To ensure consistency and simple differentiation of possible actions, each profile can contain no more than 15 commands.
The first step in creating a mental team is to prepare the system for recognizing your background mental state, the so-called neutral state, by recording a short period of your brain model while you are not trying to execute commands. Then you need to imagine the consequences of the team for 8 seconds, while the system will record a pattern of brain activity and associate it with a specific team. You can customize your own commands using both the API and the Key Bindings program.

Then, out of these 15 teams, 4 active ones are selected (it can be said that we place them on the quick launch panel). This limitation is caused by two reasons. Firstly, it is not easy for ordinary people to manage even 3 teams, and secondly, the performance of the neurointerface processor is not so big to recognize more than 4 different commands. However, active commands can be quickly changed using facial expressions, head movements, etc.

Facial expressions

Emotiv Insight determines the activity of the muscles of the face and head. Most EEG systems consider these signals as noise and filter or ignore them when interpreting signals. The Emotiv Insight system also separates them from the signals of the brain, however, it also determines the muscle groups that cause them using them. The device allows you to effectively determine such facial expressions as: wink (left and right), raised eyebrows (surprise), frowning eyebrows (frown), smile and clenched teeth.

performance measurement

Emotiv Insight supports five major indicators of mental health. Each measure is automatically scaled according to your normal range and the base level of each state — the system recognizes your normal state and capabilities and provides a set value showing your relative performance in each case, compared to your overall behavior. The system also records unscaled data for each user, so you can directly compare performance compared to your social group (same age, gender, country, lifestyle, etc.) or the entire population.
Indicators include:

• Participation : your level of immersion at the moment. A mixture of attention and concentration.
• Concentration : measure your close attention to one specific task. The depth of attention is measured, as well as the frequency of switching attention between tasks. The high level of task switching is an indicator of poor concentration and abstraction ( here I myself wanted to order the device, I have lately been very sad with concentration ). Concentration is closely related to the flow state.
• Enthusiasm : the degree of attraction or aversion to current activities. Low interest indicates a strong aversion to the task, and high interest in task obsession while the middle of the assessment range indicates indifference ( your CO ).
• Rest : the ability to relax, to restore concentration. People practicing meditation can achieve extremely high relaxation scores ( well, at last it will be possible to find out if meditation works at all or not ).
• Stress level : a measure of your comfort level when performing your current task. Strong stress can be the result of inability to perform a very difficult task. In general, raising low to moderate stress can increase productivity, while higher levels are usually destructive and can have long-term consequences for your health and well-being.

Achieving a certain level of one of the indicators can be associated with the launch of an event - for example, you can adjust the level of lighting or the volume of music based on the level of concentration.

Emotiv Insight Mobile App

By purchasing Emotiv Insight you can download a mobile application ( Android / IOS / Windows Phone ) allowing you to monitor your cognitive performance.