Todd Coleman, electrical engineer, bioengineer, and the leader of the Neural Interactional Lab at the University of California (San Diego), has proposed the use of super-thin, super-flexible electronic tattoos as a non-invasive solution to reading brainwave activity and using the subsequent data reports to control machines.
Wearable, flexible electronics attach to the forehead to monitor cognitive activity.
The device measures about the same size as the width of a human hair. It is able to stick to the user’s forehead and read electrical signals produced by the brain. A bit more specifically, the tattoo monitors the electrical rhythms of the brain and wirelessly transmits this data optically (via LEDs) or electromagnetically (via flexible antennas) to provide quantitative measurements that dictate to the machine what to do.
Physical layout of Coleman’s epidermal-based electronic system.
Coleman has found in the past that this sort of technology is effective enough to control the flight patterns of remote controlled airplanes around a room. The problem, though, was that in order to do this, the participants needed to don an electrode caps to read their brain wave activity.
Since this initial breakthrough, Coleman and team have been working on ways to shrink the technology.
They believe that they are getting close with a true prototype that can be tested out, and are even holding out hope that the technology might one day serve additional purposes like, say, being applied to the throat so that it can act as a subvocal microphone. This would allow users the ability to communicate silently and wirelessly, and even improve speech recognition technology in smartphones.
Story and images via txchnologist.com
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