ctrl-labs: Controlling your mouse pointer with your mind might sound like a science fiction scenario, but Ctrl-labs, a New York-based startup, is trying to make it a reality.
In June, The company collected 28 millions dollars from Companies such as: Lux Capitals and GV (formerly Google Ventures), and the venture capital group of Alphabet (parent company of Google).
What convinced the technology giants to fund the new company was the idea and, of course, the executives who make up the scientific team.
Thomas Reardon, the founder and CEO of Ctrl-labs is a graduate student in mathematical sciences at MIT and spearheaded a project by Microsoft for Internet Explorer. Λίγα χρόνια αργότερα, εγγράφηκε στο Columbia University, όπου σπούδασε νευροscience and managed to get his Ph.D.
2015, Reardon, along with fellow neuroscientists Patrick Kaifosh and Tim Machado, created Ctrl-labs with a specific mission:
To answer the biggest questions in computing, neuroscience and planning.
Immediately afterwards the team built its first product: an armband that reads the signals that pass through the brain in hand.
Το περιβραχιόνιο που διαθέτει μικρές πλακέτες κυκλωμάτων, συγκολλημένες με χρυσό είναι κατασκευασμένο για να προσκολλάται σφιχτά στο δέρμα, αν και είναι ακόμα σε πολύ αρχικά στάδια. Ένα καλώδιο συνδέει τις επαφές με ένα Raspberry Pi, το οποίο με τη σειρά του συνδέεται ασύρματα με ένα PC που τρέχει το λογισμικό της Ctrl-Labs.
The armband uses differential electromyography (EMG) (first seen by 1666 by the Italian physician Francesco Redi) to turn the brain into action.
How does it work?
Measuring the changes in electrical potential caused by the pulses moving from the brain muscles to the hands through the motor neurons. This information-rich pathway in the nervous system consists of two parts: the upper motor neurons that are directly connected to the center of the brain and the lower ones that correspond to the muscle fibers. Neurotransmitters run the length of this long nerve pathway and convert or remove individual muscle fibers. If you did not understand, talk about the organic equivalent of one and zero.
The armband is quite sensitive:
"It works like an antenna and so it is prone to interference."
The data of the 16 electrodes on the armband are processed by Ctrl-labs software which with the help of a machine learning algorithm is trained using Google's TensorFlow to distinguish the individual pulses of each nerve.
Below you can see revolutionary technology in action in the two videos released by VB:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AibJ9EuLTcE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ffJTYn6DNY
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