| Chilean company Thinker Thing has created the world’s first 3D printed object modeled using brain waves. The company’s Emotiv EPOC brain-computer headset allowed CTO George Lakowsky to 3D print an object just by thinking about it. The project uses neurological signals gathered from the user’s brain to print 3D objects. |
In Santiago Chile, a group of makers has decided that moving from a 3D CAD program to a 3D printed object is too much work. They want to bypass the middleman and as they state:
Our aim at Thinker Thing is to create the software to interface the latest neuro technological equipment with the latest in 3D printing machines to literally make objects with the power of thought.
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The man behind the breakthrough was George Laskowsky, Chief Technical Officer of Thinker Thing, the start-up now developing the mind-controlled 3D printing system. “It is really something magical to be there, sat without moving a limb, and watching the designs evolve into something that you were thinking about,” Laskowsky told the BBC.
Engineers and designers have been using 3D printers for more than two decades. In the last few years, prices have tumbled and desktop devices are increasingly being pitched at consumers.
Most 3D printers build objects layer by layer from materials such as plastic or metal dust, a key advantage is the comparative freedom they give designers. Yet the design software to make 3D prints can be difficult to use.
“What is the point of these printers if my son cannot design his own toy?” says Bryan Salt, CEO of Thinker Thing. “I realised that while there were a lot of people talking about the hardware of the printer no-one really seemed to be talking about how to actually use it.” In theory 3D printers could help unleash our inner creativity, freeing us from the constraints of traditional production methods. However, in practice those unwilling or unable to plough through the software instruction manual could be left downloading ready- made models designed by others.
That’s where Emotional Evolutionary Design (EED), the software that allows Thinker Thing to interpret its users’ thoughts, comes in. Its current role is to power the Monster Dreamer Project, which will allow users to design their own fantastical creatures using the power of thought.
Once the system is ready, children sit in front of a computer running Monster Dreamer, they will be presented with a series of different body shapes in bubbles. These will mutate randomly, with built-in rules preventing them becoming too abstract.
Using an Emotiv EPOC headset, a $300 electroencephalography (EEG) device, the children’s reactions to the changes will be picked up. As different brain states such as excitement or boredom generate specific patterns of brain activity, the computer can identify the shapes associated with positive emotional responses. The favoured shapes will grow bigger on the screen, while the others shrink. The biggest shapes are combined to generate a body part, and the process is repeated for different body parts until the monster is complete. The final result should be a unique 3D model that is ready for printing as a solid object.
According to Professor Hod Lipson, director of the Creative Machines Lab at Cornell University, “One of the biggest bottlenecks right now with 3D printing is content. We have iPods with no music. We have machines that can make almost anything but we do not have a lot of things to make with them.”
Lipson’s lab is also working on evolving 3D models with the mind. EndlessForms, created by two of Lipson’s students, is a website that mimics nature’s way of creating new designs in small steps. At the start of the process users are presented with 15 three-dimensional shapes. Clicking on any two will combine them and produce fifteen new shapes based on those choices. If you wanted to make a cat, you might click on one shape with the semblance of a muzzle and another with two pointed, ear-like triangles on top. The computer would then offer up a series of new shapes that more closely resemble the cat you have in mind, and so on until the model reaches the desired shape.
To reduce the time spent clicking, the researchers came to the same conclusion as the Thinker Thing team – feeding users’ thoughts back into the computer directly could make the process quicker. So, last year, the researchers also used Emotiv EPOC headsets to read users’ brain signals and therefore determine their reactions. There have been issues with this approach, but the researchers are continuing their work.
These challenges suggest the idea of 3D printing guided by fully formed mental images of users is, if not entirely farfetched but do suggest a lot of work needs to be done. Combining sensors that can pick up human emotions with design software that can interpret and respond to them looks like the nearest we’re going to get to creating 3D objects from thought in the near future.
So Thinker Thing’s twig-like orange monster arm, as unsophisticated as it may appear at first glance, may one day be celebrated as marking the start of a new and exciting way of moulding the things around us.
SOURCE BBC Future
So Thinker Thing’s twig-like orange monster arm, as unsophisticated as it may appear at first glance, may one day be celebrated as marking the start of a new and exciting way of moulding the things around us.
SOURCE BBC Future
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