[HN Gopher] EEG Cat Ears (2018)
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EEG Cat Ears (2018)
Author : searchableguy
Score : 313 points
Date : 2022-03-02 11:15 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (i2nk.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (i2nk.co)
| Nursie wrote:
| Awesome project!
|
| We had some neko-mimi's a few years ago but the ear clip broke
| very quickly.
| gg2222 wrote:
| Here is a fun demonstration of the Necomimi cat ears that were
| noted as reference material for the project.
|
| https://youtu.be/fOrqZjvQ0JQ?t=527
|
| Amazing work building your own btw!
| Animats wrote:
| Yes, it's a Necomimi clone. The big year for those was 2012.
| They detect three mental states - idle/relaxed, attentive, and
| surprised. I saw a group of cosplay girls wearing them at a
| convention. Someone called out the name of one of the girls.
| Her ears, and not the ears of the others, popped up. A review
| reported someone playing a video game had their ears in the
| "attentive" position while playing a level, and the ears would
| droop between levels.
|
| Good idea, but too bulky. It needed cosplay big hair to hide
| the machinery. The big head-mounted box is mostly the 4 AAA
| batteries. If someone revives this, the mechanism needs to be
| about half the size and better fitted to a head.
|
| The Nekomimi people also came out with a powered cat tail, but
| that was a total flop.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I do love a good write up. The concept and execution is great,
| but what's most important is that they have shared the journey.
| alexpotato wrote:
| I was really impressed with the sketches. I always thought
| those were more of an engineering "suggested best practice" but
| this is a good reminder that a visual sketch can act as a
| reference while also showing how pieces might fit together.
| sebastianvoelkl wrote:
| There was a really old version of this already 9 years ago*
| *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP8kVEvm6h8
| resonious wrote:
| Those exact ears were reference material for this project.
|
| > I began by looking at the youtube concept video for the
| necomimi brainwave-controlled ears. My intent wasn't to copy
| their implementation, but I was curious what kind of motion
| they had decided on.
| snarfy wrote:
| Neat. I bought a pair at PAX many years ago. Sadly they stopped
| working after a week or so.
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| The ones that you linked are called Necomimi, I bought them and
| they still work. The one thing that they should really improve
| is the quality of the motors because they are extremely loud
| which kind of defeats the point of having a mode which shows
| you your meditation state and relaxed state. I wish someone
| would make an update and improved version. Another thing that
| bothered me is that it needs FOUR AAA batteries, which is good
| from the environment point of view. But very bulky and kinda
| annoying from the UX point of view.
|
| The same company also made a tail, but I didn't have a chance
| to test it nor did I buy it.
| [deleted]
| blobbers wrote:
| A little surprising this isn't a kickstarter project partnered
| with Neurosky.
|
| I have a few of their headsets and I can never bring myself to
| get around to doing much with them.
|
| I should pull them out and give this a shot!
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Bought a similar thing a decade ago: https://www.necomimi.com/
| phnofive wrote:
| (2018)
|
| Hoping for a v2 but couldn't find one.
| writegit wrote:
| Super cool project and write up.
|
| What's the state of EEG these days?
|
| Last I interacted with one of these systems it seemed more like
| confimation bias from noise.
|
| Had a buddy who bought a "high end" headset, shaved his head to
| "improve the signal", and it appeared for all intents and
| purposes that it was mostly only reading concusive activity. He
| would "show me it's working" by tapping on the exterior of the
| sensors to get it to display a spike.
|
| Conceptually these systems "make sense" to me, ie. the brain uses
| electromagnetism to function so one should be able to
| sense/manipulate those vectors, but an FMRI is MASSIVE and
| requires a 1-3 Tesla electromagnet to get its fidelity, and even
| then is only measuring blood flow and correlating that to brain
| activity.
|
| So what's the hope that a tiny sensor resting on your skin will
| actually correspond to anything happening inside the brain?
| ravi-delia wrote:
| EEG studies are rife with issues, but there are a number of
| very well replicated results. Obviously they do nothing to
| localize an effect, but there are absolutely clear
| correspondences between the readings of an EEG and at least
| some cognitive activity.
|
| Will you get that nice FMRI resolution? Absolutely not. But the
| effects you do get are fascinating, and super weird.
|
| Now that's the EEG I've seen in labs. Not sure if there is a
| similarly good commercial offering.
| caycep wrote:
| the underlying concept of EEG hasn't changed since the initial
| ones in 1929. Basically just electrodes trying to detect
| whatever LFP (aggregate electrical potentials) comes across the
| cranium. The clinical ones are considered a rough gauge of
| brain activity, good enough to reliably detect large seizures
| or a generalized slowing in patients who are delirious but that
| is about it.
|
| There's MEG which tries to do the same thing but using magnetic
| detectors instead of scalp electrodes, but those systems are
| large and unwieldy
|
| In surgery, they do intracranial subdural electrodes which give
| you better cortical LFP because the electrodes are almost
| directly on top of the brain and not having to measure through
| bone.
|
| Then there are the single unit electrodes or things like the
| Black Rock systems Utah array where thin probes penetrate the
| brain into deeper structures but obviously have much more
| special circumstances where they are able to be used.
| SkittyDog wrote:
| EEG and MRI are based on two completely different physical
| measurements. They have nothing whatsoever to do with each
| otyer, in terms of why they work. Medical EEG machines are very
| small, and their size relative to MRI machines does not factor
| into how effective the EEG is.
|
| I mean, would you doubt that a stethescope can work, because
| it's so much smaller than an MRI? No, that would be ridculous.
| Same with your comparison vs EEGs.
|
| Just read the WP articles on MRIs and EEGs. You'll understand
| it.
| writegit wrote:
| Is this written from the perspective of experience with
| contemporary EEG systems or wiki reading?
|
| > They have nothing whatsoever to do with each otyer, in
| terms of why they work.
|
| I thought my comment made my knowledge of this explicit? Also
| I was referring to FMRI.
|
| >> and even then is only measuring blood flow and correlating
| that to brain activity.
|
| My question is about resolution. FMRIs are our best tools in
| terms of brain activity when concerned about resolution.
|
| A stethoscope can indirectly tell you if you have fluid in
| your lungs, but "where" or "why" are far beyond the scope of
| a stethoscope.
|
| A direct comparison would be: stethoscope :
| is water in lungs? :: EEG : is brain in skull?
|
| One seems useful; the other, self-evident.
|
| So, EEG, is it /still/ confirmation bias in its ability to
| read/interpret signals in the brain?
|
| Or has there been an appreciable development in EEG's
| abilities/resolution/functionality?
| SkittyDog wrote:
| I'm not an expert. I did some undergraduate courses in
| neuroscience, and one of those covered how various
| instruments work, including MRI, EEG, and a few others. I
| would invite anyone with a better education to correct any
| errors they can identify in what I've said.
|
| And yes I DID just refresh myself on those WP articles I
| mentioned :-) and they seemed pretty well written, to me.
|
| I also owned a NeuroSky a while back, and IMHO it was not
| very useful... But that's because it was a toy, not a
| medical device. Same underlying measurement principles, but
| very different in terms of actual operation.
|
| One of the main differences is that medical devices are
| always attached to _bare skin_ with _conductive gel_
| applied under the sensor. Also, medical devices have more
| sensors. This vastly improves the signal quality, as
| compared to the toy devices.
|
| In research work, medical EEGs have been successfully
| controlling computers for several decades, long before
| NeuroSky or the Necomini ears came to market.
|
| Tl;Dr, you don't need an FMRI to control a computer... EEGs
| work fine, but none of the existing EEG toys have been
| particularly well designed in that regard.
| pedalpete wrote:
| We're building an eeg device for sleep, and work with a
| colleague who is on the Emotiv team, so I've got a bit of
| experience.
|
| The state of BCI is improving, but one of the challenges is for
| many of the things we'd want to do, you need electrodes placed
| in areas that have hair. There are flexible sensors that can
| find their way through hair, but as somebody with thick curly
| hair, they are not fit for everyone yet. Then there is movement
| that also needs to be considered for many of these devices.
|
| This is why something like Muse headband used for meditation is
| a good starting point. You are placing the electrodes on areas
| that don't have hair, and the use case is while being still, so
| you have consistent contact without movement.
|
| At my start-up (https://soundmind.co) we're using forehead
| mounted electrodes which measure your brain waves during sleep,
| and we use sound to improve sleep performance. So like Muse
| (which you can also use during sleep, but does not yet provide
| stim), we benefit from measuring very small signals when you
| are mostly still.
|
| I think if we were walking down the street with our headband
| trying to control cat ears, you'd get lots of EEG artifacts due
| to movement of the electrodes.
|
| My 2 cents.
| svnpenn wrote:
| Site does not work at all without JavaScript, I just get a
| completely white page.
| jd24 wrote:
| Yeah, because the guy is animating in every image for some
| reason
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Very cool! This triggered another idea - our ears already can
| move a slight bit by its own muscles. Can't we read these muscle
| movements, and amplify them by controlling the servo Cat Ears in
| sync? Might be easier to learn to control, maybe.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I was thinking perhaps add a pair of microphones to the headset
| and have the ears react to loud sounds -- attempt to angle
| towards the source of the loud sound.
|
| Mux that in with the neural input.
| yoz-y wrote:
| It would be a better control mechanism. NeuroSky (the headset
| used here) is only good as an eye blink detector and even at
| that it's not great. EEG reading on the forehead, without gel
| is always really bad because there are no obviously
| interpretable signals (frontal cortex is way more complex than,
| say motor regions or the occipital nerve), the skin is tougher
| due to no hair, and is way too much muscle interference.
|
| Something with two electrodes behind ears (or wherever the
| muscles responsible for moving ears are) could be even used as
| a tool to train to move your (human) ears.
| musingsole wrote:
| The Muse 2 headset has ear and forehead sensors. I'm not too
| up on EEG, but I'd believed the ear sensors were just for
| grounding/baselining what's read from the forehead.
|
| Blink detection at least is pretty robust when I've played
| with it.
|
| https://choosemuse.com/muse-2/
| yoz-y wrote:
| yeah, ear sensors are for a ground and a reference, to be
| able to remove noise from the EEG (basically you are trying
| to have a channel which has no EEG)
|
| Muse is more or less couple of neurosky's glued together.
| With multiple sensors you can at least get to know which
| eye blinked, extract stuff like raised eyebrows and such.
| But dry electrodes on the forehead will never really give
| any good EEG results.
|
| There was a paper when somebody managed to get P300 working
| with neurosky, but they needed to average something like a
| 1000 trials. This is tens of minutes of looking at a
| flashing screen.
| daef wrote:
| I just found https://alexandre.barachant.org/blog/2017/02
| /05/P300-with-mu...
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I sat behind a girl at school whose ears would involuntarily
| move. Like quite a _lot_! Like a dog. It freaked everyone right
| out.
| caycep wrote:
| honestly, looking at the devices and not seeing the EEG traces,
| I half suspect that a lot of the input is already muscle
| artifact. Even w/ dedicated medical EEG w/ the fancy electrodes
| and conducting goop, it's plagued w/ a ton of eyelid/scalp
| muscle artifact.
| anfractuosity wrote:
| I saw something where someone tried to do that -
| https://hackaday.com/2020/01/02/assistive-technolgy-switch-i...
|
| It seems to use a type of camera to measure movement in the
| ear.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>our ears already can move a slight bit by its own muscles.
|
| Not everyone can do that though. My wife can easily twitch her
| ears by just thinking about it, I cannot no matter how hard I
| try - it's just like there is no nerve link to whatever is
| there.
| praptak wrote:
| I only discovered how to move my ears when I was like 8 years
| old. This suggests the nerves are there, just very non-
| obvious to control.
| rstarast wrote:
| I think I learned how to move my ears once I started
| wearing glasses -- at some point I was able to actively
| move them up and down my nose a little through ear
| movement.
| totetsu wrote:
| What does it feel like? Smiling without the smile?
| praptak wrote:
| A bit hard to describe (how would you describe what
| moving your arm feels like?)
|
| I'd say a bit like raising my eyebrows, but the "tension"
| is behind the ears.
| webmaven wrote:
| _> I 'd say a bit like raising my eyebrows, but the
| "tension" is behind the ears._
|
| For me the tension is pretty far back, basically halfway
| to the back of my head on either side, and covers a
| vaguely oblong patch that is about 1.5 square inches.
| totetsu wrote:
| Okay if I raise my eyebrows my ears come along for the
| ride.. but I can move my eyebrows without the ears if I
| think of it as moving my forehead.. so to isolate the
| ears only I need to lock the eyebrows at max up or down
| and try and wiggle them and see how it feels..
| praptak wrote:
| Yeah, maybe start with trying to move your forehead and
| the whole scalp.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Do you have (loose) spectacles? If yes, you can try to
| make the spectacles move back and forth (moving back
| requires flexing the muscle, spectacles moved front is
| the "natural" position). If not, maybe take a friend's
| pair? Lol just kidding, just use sunglasses.
|
| Honestly it's not some major movement and I only have 1
| degree of motion properly under control - I'm sure
| there's more that I can't. It's not a very significant
| thing irl.
| zellyn wrote:
| This is the first time in my 46 years that I've had any
| success voluntarily controlling ear muscles. Amazing!
| Every few minutes I'm able to wiggle my glasses _very_
| slightly, and then lost it completely after a few
| wiggles!
| goodpoint wrote:
| The nerves are there. You "just" need to discover them.
| gambiting wrote:
| I mean, I've been trying for 30 years of my life and
| haven't been able to, so yeah, no idea how you'd go about
| it.
| deredede wrote:
| I spent hours in front of a mirror a decade ago until I
| was able to move my left ear. Lots of trying to move
| things that either did nothing or made me clench my jaw
| or close my eyes, before eventually "feeling" my ear, and
| then a whole lot more of that before seing it move. It
| was exhausting, and even though I have a faint
| consciousness of the corresponding muscles in my right
| ear --- I have no desire to spend that time and energy
| again.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| It makes sense for actors to do that type of thing, or
| maybe martial artists seeking to discipline every part of
| their body, but the time needed is too high for what's
| mostly a party trick for regular people.
|
| Then again, maybe it gets easier with other muscles as
| you practice and master more things - could it help
| overall coordination, maybe improve typing speed or
| balance?
| robbedpeter wrote:
| There are individuals who are more adept with their toes
| than most people are with their hands, using their feet
| to paint, draw, write, play music, and so on. It's a
| repeated phenomenon, demonstrating neural plasticity in a
| great way.
|
| Such abilities are latent in all of us, differences in
| brain function that paralyze or confuse any part of the
| body are very rare.
|
| You, too, can pull off an arched eyebrow like The Rock,
| do ear wiggles, crazy eye rolls, and more. Getting good
| at it seems to be a matter of methodical practice.
| gambiting wrote:
| >> Getting good at it seems to be a matter of methodical
| practice.
|
| Yes, but I can practice moving my eyebrows to achieve
| mastery, because I know how to move them at least a
| little bit. With my ears, I literally cannot - no matter
| how hard I think about it or how much I strain, they just
| won't move. So how can you practice something that you
| cannot do at all? Just "try harder"? I feel like that's
| like telling someone with no legs to practice walking.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| Maybe tiny shocks like with a tens system, or a pinch,
| used to jolt your nerves into recognizing the location? I
| had a lot of trouble with my eyebrow arching, but
| eventually got it by poking it with a straw or pushing it
| around with my finger.
|
| Or maybe there's a genetic component, like tongue
| rolling. The nerves and muscles are there, no sensation
| seems to be lost, they're just arranged a bit different.
|
| Kinda cool how something trivial can go into these weird
| rabbit holes, anyway.
| goodpoint wrote:
| We instinctively "try" and discover our motor control as
| babies, depending on how much feedback we get the
| movement.
|
| Unsurprisingly, hands are very popular.
|
| Other things like proprioception of our backs and general
| posture can go unnoticed even as adults. I.e. it takes
| careful focus and training to [re]learn how and what to
| move.
| ioseph wrote:
| So I can wiggle my ears but only sometimes, right now I can
| move my left but not the right, other times it's the right
| but most of time I can't and it's like the nerve is
| missing. It's usually something I notice when I'm relaxed
| and horizontal
| amelius wrote:
| Probably similar to how tongue rolling is genenic.
| mysterydip wrote:
| Really extensive write-up, very informative.
| TruthWillHurt wrote:
| Nice project, but obviously from the single electrode and its
| placement, the only EEG signal you'll get is eye-movement
| artifacts...
| Mashimo wrote:
| Dang, that 3D printer needs some calibrating :D The first layer
| looks horrible (Or it's very old)
| pilotneko wrote:
| It's a Makerbot cupcake, which is pretty old by this point (~10
| years). One of the first "affordable" 3D printers.
|
| https://makerbot.fandom.com/wiki/Cupcake
| snvzz wrote:
| Actually readable not dynamically loading archived version:
|
| https://archive.is/Axsy4
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