Chaotic Moon Labs’ Board of Imagination

At CES 2012 Chaotic Moon Labs debuted the Board of Awesomeness, a motorized skateboard which was controlled based upon readings from a Kinect. Now the CML crew has taken the concept one step further with their Board of Imagination.

The BOI is similar to the Board of Awesomeness except that control is based upon brain wave readings from an Emotiv EPOC headset. Logging and control interfacing is achieved using a board-mounted Windows 8 tablet with full voice control.

We were immediately skeptical about these latest claims, given the close proximity to April 1, and because the type of commmand and control claimed seemed like it would require mind reading. But then we checked out the Emotiv neurotechology website. From there we learned that unlike the first gen brain wave sensors found in sub-$100 toys, the Emotiv headsets and associated software combine sophisticated high-resolution neuro-signal acquisition with processing to determine intentions based on brain wave patterns. Somewhat like training a speech-to-text program to recognize your speech patterns and voice inflections. Pretty cool.

According to Emotiv their basic headset costs around $300. This doesn’t include the ability to develop, just to use the headset with ready made apps. Development hardware and required software ramp up the cost rapidly.

If you want to have a look at the software for free (though registration is required), check out Emotiv’s SDKLite package. This is “an introductory suite of development tools to get you familiar with the Emotiv SDK environment. SDKLite includes EmoComposer™, a tool which emulates the output of the Emotiv EPOC headset and provides scripting functionality to simulate real-time detections.”