Attention evil geniuses! Mind-controlled robots aren't that expensive. Chip Audette just built one by attaching his laptop to less than $500 in specialized equipment and writing a little custom software code.
The robot---really a Hexbug Spider---is connected to some nifty brain-wave-reading hardware called OpenBCI. WIRED wrote about this open source project back in January as they were getting their Kickstarter project off the ground. That campaign is now complete, and the OpenBCI team will ship out its first brain-reading kits next month. But a few lucky hackers like Audette have been able to get their hands on early prototypes of the hardware. And they've been putting it to good use, giving us an early taste of what can be done with this type of gear.
There's the Brainwriter---an OpenBCI hack designed to help patients with ALS create art with using their brain waves. And in the Bay Area, a self-described group of cognitive technologists are fusing the toolkit with code that uploads brain signals to the internet. The idea is to use cloud computing to spin up the kind of computing power you'd need to do real-time analysis of brain waves. "If, for instance, we get a group of people into a room and have them all send their EEG data to the cloudbrain, what patterns would emerge?" says Pierre Karashchuk, one of the project's developers. And then there's the contraption from Chip Audette.
As you can see from the video below, Audette's brain-powered robot makes for a pretty fun demo. There are glitches, but generally, it works. When Audette closes his eyes, the robot marches forward. If he focuses on a flashing image, it turns right. And if he eyes another flashing image, it turns left.
As he explains on his blog, Audette uses the OpenBCI's EEG electrodes and custom brain-signal-processing board, all connected to an Arduino Uno, which acts as the interface between the Hexbug robot and his computer. As his computer monitor flashes two giant squares at different frequencies, the computer analyzes his brain wave data to determine whether he's gazing at the left square, the right square, or if he has closed his eyes.
This kind of interface works because it makes him create brain waves that are really easy for the OpenBCI gear to detect. "Ideally, I'd just think the word 'Fire!' and the robot would respond," he says in the post. "Unfortunately, those kinds of brain waves are too hard to detect."
Scientific-grade electroencephalography (EEG) monitors cost thousands of dollars, but, thanks to devices such as the Emotiv, there's been a mini-boom in low cost brain-hacking gear. OpenBCI wants to be the open-source player in this space. Their kit comes with its own mini-computer and sensors that you jack into a black helmet-like device, called "Spider Claw 3000," that you make on a 3-D printer. "What we really want to do is just provide the hardware to let people being learning," says Conor Russomanno, one of OpenBCI's creators.
OpenBCI will start shipping out the 600 devices that it sold via Kickstarter next month, but the company is also selling gear---priced between $400 and $800 on its web site.
