Control Devices With Your Thoughts

Hitachi's Advanced Research Lab has demonstrated a prototype of a portable non-invasive device to measure and record brain activity.

The device uses brain photo-topography to read the brain signals. Photo-topography uses near-infrared sensors to measure the change in blood flow in the brain.

The unit consists of a headband that weighs only 400 g (14 ounces) which holds 8 pairs of light source and detector pairs. The headband is connected to a 630 g electronics box that can be worn on a belt.
The data stays in communication via wireless LAN to a nearby computer for recording and analysis of the brain signals.

Although Hitachi has no specific plans to develop the unit as an interface to a thought-controlled robot, they have done experiments to drive a model train.

Hitachi expects that the dramatic reduction in size - from older versions that would fill a room - to a wearable device, will radically change how the brain measurements are used:
"Not just for medical applications, photo-topography technology will be more familiar to us. For example, this technology may be useful for health care application with observing a trend in everyday measurements," said Hitachi. The company also explains about some other application fields such as psychology, marketing and education."

They could not say when the device would be commercially available.

Hitachi Develops Portable Photo-topography Equipment for Measuring Brain Activities in Daily Life -- Tech-On!