CBC News - British Columbia - Article on Bright Ideas

5 months ago

Vancouver thought-power lights up Ontario

People are using the power of their thoughts to light up landmark locations thousands of kilometres away, thanks to a technology being demonstrated at Ontario's Olympic pavilion in Vancouver.

In what developers say is the world's largest thought-controlled computing installation, participants are changing the colours of the nighttime lighting displays shining on Niagara Falls, the parliament buildings in Ottawa and the CN Tower in Toronto.

'We can tune in brain stations'—InteraXon CEO Trevor Coleman

Pavilion visitors can volunteer to sit in comfortable chairs, wear a headset, then think about a colour.

Read more:http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/02/16/bc-interaxon-thought-control-light-displays.html#ixzz0fqaYYrwL

London Telegraph, The Huffington Post, Vancouver Sun, Popular Science, and much more...

6 months ago

London Telegraph (Blog)

Tripping the light: fantastic

I’m being told to empty my mind as I sit with a headset on with four electrodes – three on my ear and one on my forehead – in front of a giant screen. On a small monitor attached to my seat, I see lines that represent my laidback alpha brainwaves drop steadily down to the bottom of the screen (ah, so all that yogic downward-dogging does actually calm you).

Now I have to ramp my brain up again: I’m directed to start concentrating hard as I stare at a live screen of the CN Tower in Toronto (I could have chosen Niagara Falls or Ottawa’s parliament buildings). As my beta brainwaves go to work I make the 1,300 LED lights around the structure spin – and, not to show off, but I mean Whirling-Dervish spin. Read more...

The Huffington Post

Thought-Controlled Lights At Olympics: 'Bright Lights' Installation Lights Up Niagara Falls

Thought-controlled lights illuminating Niagara Falls during the winter Olympics? Maybe this will cheer up the Vancouver locals apparently dreading the upcoming games.

Toronto-based company InteraXon (which specializes in thought controlled computing) is planning an installation where visitors will be able to control live light shows at Niagara Falls with their thoughts, from Vancouver. The project, Bright Ideas, is described as the the wold's largest thought-controlled experience. Read more...

Torontoist

CN Tower Now Subject to Olympic-Goers' Mind Control

If you're in the mood to feel an overwhelming sense of power, hop on a plane and go to the Ontario Pavilion at the Olympics in Vancouver. There, you can control the lights on the CN Tower with your mind. Yes, that's right: with your mind. Read more...

CNN

Story Highlights

  • Canadian company creates "largest thought-controlled computing installation"
  • Visitors to the Olympics use brainwaves to control the lights at 3 major Canada landmarks
  • People put on headsets and increase lighting by thinking about it, company explains
  • Landmarks are: Toronto's CN Tower, Ottawa's Parliament Buildings and Niagara Falls
Read more...

Popular Science

Heading to the Olympics? Don't Leave Without Controlling the CN Tower's Lights With Your Mind

It wouldn't be the Olympics without distractions; the 2006 Winter Games in Turin had their Austrian doping scandals, and the most recent Summer Games in Beijing were punctuated by an epic opening ceremony followed by rampant media censorship. Not to be outdone, Canada's Bright Ideas installation will allow visitors to the upcoming Vancouver Games the chance to control lighting installations at major landmarks in faraway Ontario using only their thoughts. Read more...

Metro - Sweden

Styr ljuset i Kanada med din tankekraft

Genom att bara använda sina tankar kan besökare på vinter-OS genomföra stordåd. Belysningen på CN Tower i Toronto, parlamentet i Ottawa och Niagara-fallen kan styras med tankekraft från Ontario Pavilion. Read more...

Vancouver Sun

Tech startup takes mind-controlled computing out of science fiction and into real life

If you're planning to be at the upcoming Vancouver Olympics, take time to stop at the Ontario pavilion and give a thought to tech startup InteraXon.

That thought could be about lighting up Niagara Falls. Or the CN Tower. Or Ottawa's Parliament buildings.

Mind-controlled computing has come off the pages of sci-finovels into real life and Toronto-based InteraXon is at the Olympics with the hope that demonstrating the technology to a world audience will help move it into the mainstream. Read more...

Korea IT Times

The Winter Olympics has the Largest Thought-Controlled Computing Installation Experiment

How many ways can you turn on the lights? The most common ways are turning a switch, clapping, or using a remote control. What about just by thinking about it?

During the Winter Olympics in Canada this month, a Canadian company called "InteraXon" is doing an experiment, in which the Olympic "visitors use their brainwaves to control the lights at three major landmarks in Canada, such as Niagara Falls." "When people put on the headsets and find themselves increasing the brightness of the lights by just thinking about it, you can almost see their brains explode," says Trevor Coleman, the chief operating officer for InteraXon. Read more...

Ottawa Citizen (Blog)

Ottawa Goes to the Olympics

Ontario House offers free admission to the general public in order to experience Ontario. With a daytime capacity of 450 people, visitors to Ontario House will be able to change the nightly illumination of three of the province's major tourism icons-the CN Tower, Niagara Falls and Ottawa's own Parliament Buildings-utilizing innovative new thought-controlled computing technology designed by Toronto-based firm InteraXon. After donning special headsets, guests will be taught to use their brainwaves to control the three light shows taking place in Ontario, over 3,000 km (1,864 miles) away. Read more...

CiNEHEARTECH - Germany

Kontrolle mit gedanken

Aber was ist für uns Menschen die intuitivste Steuerungsmöglichkeit? Steuerung nicht unserer Gedanken, sondern durch die Gedanken. Oder um genauer zu sein über elektrische Potentiale die sich über der Kopfoberfläche ableiten lassen. InteraXon, eine kanadische Tüftlerschmiede, möchte dieses Jahr das o.g. Konzept pünktlich zu den Olympischen Winterspielen in Vancouver im großen Stile vorstellen. So haben Besucher des Ontario Pavilion die Möglichkeit mit einer Vorrichtung ähnlich einem EEG (Elektroenzephalografie) und ihren Gedanken, Live-Lichtershows an verschiedenen Stellen Kanadas zu steuern. Read more...

Wired.com Article on Bright Ideas

6 months ago

Winter Olympics to Demo Thought-Controlled Lighting

“Along with the figure skating, ice hockey and snowboarding, another event will compete for attention at the Winter Olympics in Canada this month.

A Canadian company has created what it calls the “largest thought-controlled computing installation.” It’s an experiment that lets visitors to the Olympics use their brainwaves to control the lights at three major landmarks in Canada, including Niagara Falls…"

Read the rest at wired.com

Globe and Mail Features InteraXon

6 months ago

It’s the thought that counts

Published on Friday, Jan. 29, 2010 6:27PM EST
by David McDougall

Last summer, employees of the small Toronto tech company InteraXon were sitting in their Dundas Street West office, conjuring ways to exploit their mind-controlling technology. Maybe they could use their brainwave sensors to build some kind of telekinetic musical instrument made with singing glass bowls? Or a thought-driven heat lamp?

But the Ontario government came up with the brightest master plan. Acting on a non-extrasensory tip from the Ministry of Research and Innovation, the Ministry of Tourism contacted them, asking if they had the power to illuminate the CN Tower.

“We thought about it for a minute and went, ‘Well, I guess so, yeah. Let’s do it,’ ” recalls Trevor Coleman, one of InteraXon’s founders.

A few days later the ministry came back again and asked if they could do something with Niagara Falls and Parliament Hill, too. In what will be their biggest venture to date, InteraXon will use its special technology to send brainwaves from the pavilion at the Vancouver Olympics to those three landmarks back east.

“They also wanted us to light up the ice-fishing huts in North Bay,” reports Mr. Coleman, “but we thought that would be a little too much … scope.”

Previously, they built items such as a thought-controlled video game where players race rocket ships using beta waves – a big hit in the club scene.

Then there’s the chair that levitates when you reach a meditative brain-state.

When visitors to the Ontario Pavilion next month put on the headphone-like brainwave sensors, their mental activity will be communicated to control systems that light up each of the sites. Slow your mind and the lights dim as the brain starts producing lower-frequency alpha waves. Higher-frequency beta waves of an alert mind make the lights come to life – comet trails stream down the shaft of the CN Tower; backlit Niagara Falls starts to glow in shades of purple and red; Parliament Hill springs out of the shadows.

“[The data] can be pretty difficult to master at first,” explains project engineer Chris Aimone, an unobtrusive sensor resting over his forehead as he watches a graphic readout of his thought patterns coruscating across a white monitor.

The three-person company grew out of an eclectic crowd of artists and engineering students working under the tutelage of Steve Mann, a engineering professor at the University of Toronto and a self-proclaimed cyborg.

Project leader Ariel Garten, 30, a fashion designer and practising psychotherapist who holds a degree in neuroscience, first got involved with a brainwave jazz concert with several of Mr. Mann’s students back in 2003, when dozens of audience members were wired up to EEG sensors used to modulate the musicians’ electric instruments. “When I saw this technology, I thought, ‘Something needs to be done with it.’ ”

Later she teamed up with Mr. Aimone, 31, a talented designer with a background in electrical engineering, and Mr. Coleman, 29, a former club promoter with a flare for business. “We have an insane amount of creativity on this team,” says Ms. Garten, who is wearing a pair of rainbow-striped rubber boots and sitting on a fun-fur-covered teeter-totter in the corner of their warehouse-lab amid an impressive array of powerful computers, sophisticated electronics and empty Pizzaiolo boxes.

She says their diversity gives them an edge when it comes to exploring this new technology. “It allows us to come up with funny ideas and weird ideas and the right ideas. … Something that both functions technologically, is sound scientifically, is aesthetically pleasing, engages emotionally. All of those different things,” she says. “How do we do that? I don’t know, at five in the morning?”

The project with the Ontario government, which has a mid-six-figure budget, was a big score for the company, catapulting their fledgling business from the thick ether of ideas to front-stage reality. But apart from the exposure, the best part about going to the Olympics, they say, is the ideas they get to spark.

“One of the things we think is really important is kind of being evangelists for this technology,” says Mr. Coleman. “Every time someone has the experience for the first time and they control something with their mind – a levitating chair or a toy car in a track – they immediately come up with 10 new ideas, right there.”

InteraXon on Gizmodo

6 months ago

Thought-Controlled Computing Will Light Up Vancouver Olympics

Figure skating? Please. The main attraction for many visitors to the Winter Olympics will be an installation letting them control the lights at Niagara Falls with their minds. That’s right: we’re all telekinetics now.

Of course, anything seemingly this amazing requires some hedging. The Bright Ideas installation by Toronto-based company InteraXon doesn’t let you decide what color the lights should be or how brightly they should shine, and it can’t tell if you’re specific thought is, say, “Lights, I command thee!” Instead:

The headset used in this installation measures the brain’s electrical output and reacts to alpha waves, associated with relaxation, and beta waves, associated with concentration. As the users relax or focus their thoughts, the computer will send a message over the internet to the site they are viewing. InteraXon’s custom software connects users thoughts to the lighting controls to change the display on the landmark site.

So basically, as long as you’re thinking hard about something, you’ll be able to control a light show thousands of miles away. In addition to Niagara Falls, displays will also be featured at Toronto’s CN Tower and Ottawa’s Parliament Buildings.

Someone, please, if you make it out to Vancouver this month, let me know what this is like. And don’t worry! I’m sure the headset’s not simultaneously recording your brain waves to somehow remotely manipulate your every thought down the road. At least, I’m pretty sure.

Original article on: www.gizmodo.com

InteraXon on the Business News Network

7 months ago

BNN logo

InteraXon on the Business News Network



You can watch the video here or on BNN's site.

Function Meets Brainwaves

8 months ago

SWE cover

Function Meets Brainwaves:

InteraXon featured in Society of Women Engineers Magazine

Earlier this year Society of Women Engineers Magazine profiled InteraXon partner Ariel Garten in their cover story on women working in the field of wearable computing.

You can see us on the cover or read the full article.

CTV webMANIA

8 months ago

CTV logo

CTV webMANIA


CTV featured InteraXon and their Star Trek themed brainwave game in their national news broadcast's webMANIA segment earlier this year.

You can watch the video here or on CTV's site.

Thought-Controlled Computing

8 months ago

Toronto Star logo

Thought-Controlled Computing

Power of the mind drives technology

InteraXon team harnesses brainwaves to operate video games, gadgets and even levitating chairs

The Toronto Star
Feb 26, 2009
By: Joseph Hall

While they ready the chair you can levitate with your mind, there's time for a little concert ...

Water squirts and pools on the floor as Steve Mann's fingers fly across his "hydraulophone," coaxing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" out of the tadpole-shaped instrument.

"It's sophisticated frolic," says Mann, creator of the hydraulophone, the water organ.

Mann is part of a team behind a little piece of techno Neverland at work on Dundas St. W. In the cluttered offices of InteraXon Thought Controlled Computing, a host of Tinkerbell-worthy gadgets are taking flight.

"It's a pretty creative atmosphere," says lead researcher Ariel Garten, about the fledgling firm. Perhaps the most thought-provoking of the projects being pursued at the funked-out facility are the games and gadgets that can be manipulated with the mind.

Your mind can even levitate a chair and influence the accompanying sound and music, Garten explains.

To run the mind-controlled devices, users have electroencephalograph sensors. These sensors pick up the tiny electronic pulses — microvolt in intensity — that buzz like subatomic bees across your head. The pulses are the signature signals of brain activity.

All of our thoughts, movements, and states of mind are the products of neurochemical cascades that run along neurological pathways in the form of electronic impulses.

"The summation of all this electrical communication can actually be read outside of your brain," says Garten, an accomplished artist and fashion designer, who also trained in neuroscience. "And outside your head the amassment of all this electrical activity is summed up ... and you can read the general trend of your brain."

The specific "trend" of impulses the InteraXon team capture are Alpha waves, which are generated when the mind is "blissfully, calmly" relaxed, Garten explains.

"So you have to relax," she says as you sink back into the cushioned chair, which dangles on a chain from a ceiling missing a few tiles.

Breathe deeply and slowly, think of ocean waves. And on a computer screen before you, a line measuring your Alpha wave output begins to spike as you will your mind to relax.

When you're calmed down enough to push the spike past a tripping line, an electronic winch begins to lift the chair.

"So, it's a really nice metaphor for a kind of meditative state," Garten says. "Everybody has always dreamed that as you meditate you could ... levitate yourself."

As metaphors go, it may be nice imagery. As a practical matter, it results from InteraXon's painstaking software programming that allows it to capture the Alpha waves, isolate them from all other electronic noise — from other computers, cellphones — and amplify them into a usable electronic signal.

"All of that is nullified and we're just getting your pure brainwave in a way that's meaningful," says Garten. And with that isolated brainwave, Garten says, anything that can be plugged in can conceivably be manipulated by Alpha activity.

InteraXon's main goal, Garten says, is as lofty as the chair.

"We're here to change the face of thought-controlled computing," she says. "(It's) becoming much more common and it's really the breaking point for this technology."

Garten describes the company as a "start up" that launched a year ago. It has five partners, who initially financed the company themselves, but buzz about their work has attracted willing investors.

InteraXon is actively developing commercial games and other gadgets for a general market.

The technology also has obvious implications for people with physical impairments, from those who suffer from such degenerative diseases such as ALS and Parkinson's, to those with spinal-cord injuries. But InteraXon's focus is to bring the technology to the general public.

And as interest heightens and technology is created — in the form of computer games and other gadgets — the sophistication will grow and prices fall, Garten predicts.

It's this technology-price cycle that will bring thought-controlled computing to the field of assisted medical devices, says Tom Chau, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Pediatric Rehabilitation Engineering at Toronto's Bloorview MacMillan Children's Centre.

Chau's Bloorview team creates devices to help severely disabled kids interact with the world.

"Of course, the more this kind of technology gets developed, the more useful it will be for our needs," says Chau.

Thought-controlled computing no longer Star Trek fiction

8 months ago

IT Business logo

Thought-controlled computing no longer Star Trek fiction


IT Business
May 19, 2009
By: Brian Jackson

When Trevor Coleman's friend threw a Star Trek convention, he could have slapped on some pointy-ears for a costume and attended like most fans. Instead he contributed a brainwave-controlled video game straight out of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Toronto-based InteraXon had developed a system that measures brainwave activity using electrodes held in place with a rubber headband, then converts those readings into an output that can manipulate a computer. It's a little bit different from using a mouse and keyboard.

The Star Trek convention was perfect for the technology's first public debut, Coleman says. It just took a graphical interface made to approximate one seen in Star Trek episode The Game.

"By entering and leaving particular brain states, you can control a seat vibrator that gives them tactile feedback," he says. "Also, the video image and the game are controlled with your mind alone."

InteraXon demonstrated their technology at the Premier's Innovation Awards on Tuesday. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty slipped the rubber band and electrodes onto his head and shot a few discs into a moving cylinder -- the object of the game.

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