A taste of the digital future

A very brief introduction to some NICTA projects, then a fun look at the state-of-the-art in brain-computer interface research from around the world. Originally presented at Offis eClub.

Transcript

1. A Taste of the Digital Future* *One version of it, anyway Ricky Robinson
2. Software from NICTA spin out Open Kernel Labs (OKL) runs more than 1.6 billion devices, such as mobile phones, worldwide. OKL was acquired late last year by General Dynamics, a US $23 billion listed company.
3. Our gigabit wireless spin out Multi-Gig Wireless
4. Big Data for Geothermal exploration
5. Machine learning is key Data cleansing Big data analytics Data fusion
6. Bionic eye prototype implanted in first human recipient last month (Bionic Vision Australia)
7. © Bionic Vision Australia 1. Camera captures image and transmits data to an external, body worn processing unit 2. Data processed and sent to implanted system via external wire 3. Implanted receiver passes signals onto retinal implant 4. Implanted electrode array stimulates retina 5. Electrical signals sent from retina via visual pathway to vision processing centres in the brain
8. Let’s talk Brain Computer Interfaces…
9. Science fiction has a funny way of becoming science fact.* *There is some disagreement as to whether science fiction is a roadmap or a warning to humanity. In the interests of delivering a fun talk, I assume the former.
10. Mind copying A Rough Taxonomy of BCIs by Application BCI Controlling physical world objects Mind sharing/ recording Mind control Artificial memories/ data store Remote control Behaviour control Assistive tech/ prosthetics Telepathy/ shared dreaming Systems control Knowledge upload Data mule
11. Assistive tech/ prosthetics
12. Systems control © Warner Bros
13. Remote control © Twentieth Century Fox
15. Limiter device Behaviour control © BBC
16. Knowledge upload © Warner Bros
17. Data mule © Harper Voyager
18. Mind copying
19. Telepathy/ shared dreaming © Warner Bros
20. Telepathy/ shared dreaming? © Warner Bros
21. Nope. It’s all drugs, dude. No BCI here. So, moving on… http://www.pasivdevice.org/
22. What’s real, or might be soon?
23. © DLR Assistive tech/ prosthetics
24. © Brown University
25. © Brown University
26. Remote control © North Carolina State University
27. Behaviour control
28. Knowledge upload © NSF
29. Mind sharing/ recording © UC Berkeley
30. Show subject a few hours of movie trailers and record brain activity. 1
31. © UC Berkeley
32. Build a model that correlates features in the movies (shapes, edges, motion) to patterns of activity in the brain. 2
33. Record brain activity while subject watches a new set of trailers. This will be used to assess the quality of the model and generate reconstructed video. 3
34. Randomly sample around 5000 hours of video clips from YouTube and run these samples through the model to generate predictions of brain activity. 4
35. Select the 100 clips which generated predicted brain activity most similar to the observed brain activity, then blend (i.e., average) these clips. This yields the reconstructed video. 5
36. © UC Berkeley
37. Implications? Numerous.
38. Communicate via thought (synthetic telepathy)
39. Record that tune that’s playing in your head (maybe it’s the next chart topping hit)
40. Surreptitious surveillance
41. Dr Ricky Robinson ricky.robinson@nicta.com.au @rickyrobinson Thank you!