Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting yet again from warm, sunny Colorado. Always warm, always sunny—sometimes Colorado, although it will be snowy here just a little bit. Today is November 17, 2024, and I’m making a video to talk to you about something we’re working on that’s pretty exciting.
As many of you know, brain-computer interfaces are a big passion of mine. We have a BCI project internally at Input Output, and we’ve worked with different vendors over the years. One of those vendors is OpenBCI, which is creating one of the most advanced and unique headsets. I’m excited to show you guys what it’s called: the Galia.
The Galia combines best-in-class VR with beautiful dry EEG sensors. There are ten channels located here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. It also connects with the VR headset. The Galia is pretty much the most advanced biosensing headset ever constructed. They’re quite expensive, so they’re not a consumer product just yet, but it’s pushing the state of the art.
What makes it very unique is that they developed a brand new conductive polymer active electrode. It’s very soft and spongy. If you’re familiar with EEG dry electrodes, you know they can be quite uncomfortable. There are also a lot of really cool algorithms and features they’ve integrated, and it uses a Wi-Fi-based data transmitter instead of Bluetooth, allowing for very high throughput back and forth.
So, why is this relevant? Project Mobius is something we’re using to test out this Galia headset and its capabilities. We’re going to combine this headset with first-person view (FPV) drone racing. This is what an FPV drone race looks like, and it’s just crazy. If you ever try it, you’ll see how you’re kind of flying through this maze and experiencing vertigo. Some of the drones look like the DJI Avata, for example.
What we’re going to do is figure out how to program the Galia, then connect it to an FPV drone. The idea is to control the drone not with a controller, but with your mind. This is what makes it so interesting and special. I’m looking for some help; Marcus Vest will be the product manager responsible for this work. He’s been doing a lot of our projects and comes from my alma mater, CU Boulder.
If you’re interested in participating, if you’re a programmer who understands a bit about these things and you like drones, this could be your thing. Please send your resumes and comments, along with well wishes to our good friend Marcus, with the subject line "Project Mobius." Include a brief description of why you think you’d be awesome and what you’re doing. It’s always fun to crowdsource these types of things. We’ll be hiring a few contractors to help figure out how to get this done.
I’m going to set up a drone racing range where we’ll have the Galia headset. We’re going to get two of them and write some software to see if you can control the drone with your mind. If you can control the drone with your mind, which has already been tested with a person with cerebral palsy, the next step would be to see if we can actually do a productive race with that and what that looks like.
I think it’s probably the ultimate focusing tool because you have to maintain absolute focus and be completely in a flow state to command the mental presence and the deep alpha waves necessary to pilot the drone and be in the zone. It would be fun to see if we can even bring something like that to Hydra.
So, just a very brief video and a call to action. You’ll have the email address right there: [email protected]. Please reference Project Mobius, named after the Mobius strip. The Galia headset allows you to combine VR with reading one’s brain, and we’ll see if we can push the state of the art. Thank you all for listening, and have a wonderful day. Cheers!
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