BBC Testing 'Mind Control TV' Prototype That Operates Using Brainwaves

The BBC took a “simple low cost brainwave reading headset” and developed a “Mind Control TV” prototype for its iPlayer streaming service, Cyrus Saihan, head-business development, said Thursday in a blog post. It allows users to open an “experimental version” of iPlayer and choose a TV program to view “using nothing but their brainwaves,” Saihan said. For now, it’s an “internal” BBC prototype designed to give program creators, technologists and others “an idea of how this technology might be used in the future,” he said. In its first trial run, 10 BBC staff members all were able to launch iPlayer and start viewing a program “simply by using their minds,” he said. Though it was “much easier for some than it was for others,” all who tried it “managed to get it to work,” he said. BBC researchers envision using the technology “to help users with a broad range of disabilities who cannot easily use traditional TV remote controls or other conventional interfaces,” he said. For example, people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis “may increasingly be able to use brain-computer interfaces to get a better experience of digital and media services than they currently do, potentially opening up the online world of information and experiences that the rest of us now take for granted,” he said. “Our proof-of-concept is only an experiment and just a toe in the water, but it helps our initial understanding of how we might be able to control devices using our brainwaves in the years to come.”