Wen 丨 head leopard
In the past 2021, with the continuous pursuit of the capital market and the continuous "hot search" impact of various NFT commodities, the term "metacosmity" has long ceased to be a strange and fresh concept.
However, there is a pivotal technology tycoon who is not very interested in the behavior of all walks of life to break through the head and want to share the "metacosm", but is more optimistic about another technology known as the "ultimate form of the metacosm": the "brain-computer interface" - he is Elon Musk.
As early as August 2020, Musk invested in a company called Neuralink, which focused on "brain-computer interface", a more futuristic and sci-fi-sounding technology.
In 2021, Musk continues to stand for brain-computer interface technology. On the one hand, Neuralink raised $205 million in july last year, the largest funding campaign of any company in the field; on the other hand, Neuralink's equipment has been successfully tested on many pigs and a monkey playing table tennis, and the next step will officially enter the human trial stage.
So, how to understand the brain-computer interface technology that Musk so admires and affirms? Is it as new and different as stated in the movie The Matrix?
Benchmarking Western countries, what stage is China's brain-computer interface technology in now, and has the industry reached a certain level of application?
In this article, the Head Leopard Research Institute will sort out and interpret the current situation of the brain-computer interface technology industry for you from the perspective of concept, industry and application, gain insight into the future development trend of the industry, and excavate excellent industry targets.
What is the "sacred" of brain-computer interfaces?
Brain-computer interface refers to the direct connection created between the human or animal brain and external devices to achieve brain-to-device information exchange, and its workflow includes the acquisition and acquisition of EEG signals, signal processing, signal output and execution, and finally feedback the signal to the brain. Brain-computer interfaces were first proposed at the end of the 20th century to help people with disabilities re-walk or dominate their upper limbs, and technological developments have been more suitable for normal people's lives and production.
At present, the field of medical health is the initial and most important application field of brain-computer interface technology, and it is also the application field closest to commercialization. With the development of technology, the application field continues to expand, and will be gradually applied to game entertainment, learning and education, smart home and military fields in the future. In the process of development, brain-computer interfaces also face many challenges, including extremely low technological maturity, technical complexity caused by cross-disciplines, difficulty in commercialization and scale, and safety and ethical issues.
Brain-computer interface workflow
In the brain-computer interface workflow, signal acquisition uses sensors, such as EEG caps, to acquire brain signals; signal processing includes three steps: signal processing, feature engineering, and classification regression.
Because the amplitude of scalp EEG signal is very small, and it is susceptible to interference from EMG, eye ECE, ECG, etc., it is necessary to improve its signal-to-noise ratio through signal processing; feature engineering is mainly feature extraction, including time domain, frequency domain, time frequency domain, Riemann space, etc.; classification regression is to use machine learning algorithms to decode its meaning from scalp EEG; the output and execution of the signal is to send instructions to external devices according to the meaning of the brain signal to complete the user's intention.
Medical health is the initial and most important application area, and the application of various fields can be expected in the future
The field of medical health is the initial and most important application area of brain-computer interface, and it is also the application field closest to commercialization.
The application of brain-computer interface in the medical field mainly focuses on the four major effects of "monitoring", "improvement/recovery", "substitution" and "enhancement"; the application of brain-computer interface in the field of game entertainment is mainly to provide gamers with a new operational dimension different from traditional game control, control the game through the concept and combination of VR, and obtain an immersive game experience; the application of brain-computer interface in the field of learning education mainly focuses on learning state recognition, attention level measurement, learning motivation assessment and other aspects.
At present, the brain-computer interface technology in the field of education is still in the preliminary application stage; the application of the brain-computer interface in the field of smart home is concentrated in the "supplement" aspect, through the combination of the Internet of Things, the brain-computer interface can be equivalent to the "remote control", people control the switch of the lamp through the idea, the switch of the curtain, etc., and even further control the operation of the home robot; the application of the brain-computer interface in the military field is concentrated on "substitution" and "enhancement", through the control of various types of drones and robots, instead of soldiers to perform various dangerous tasks, reduce casualties.
Brain-computer interfaces face many challenges in their development
From the perspective of brain-computer interface technology, the number of neurons in medicine is large and complex, and the current research on brain feedback stimulation and brain work mechanism is very limited.
In addition, in the process of signal acquisition, non-invasive interfaces have the problem of poor collection signals, and invasive interfaces need to face the problem of brain damage; at present, the development stage of brain-computer interfaces is still at the level of laboratory display, and there is still a long way to go from true commercialization; at the same time, brain-computer interface technology is a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research field, which involves multiple scientific fields such as information engineering, computer engineering, biological engineering, sports rehabilitation and neurology.
The development of brain-computer interfaces requires the common support of the development of multiple disciplines, but the backwardness of any discipline will cause a short-board effect and restrict the development of brain-computer interface technology; moreover, there are many difficulties in non-technical problems of brain-computer interfaces, mainly for security and ethical issues, including hacker attacks, idea control, data theft, and even human nature issues, ethical issues, censorship issues and so on. The landing of the brain-computer interface is bound to be accompanied by the introduction of a series of relevant laws and regulations before it can be applied on a large scale.
China's research on brain-computer interface technology started late, but the degree of emphasis is no different from that of Western countries such as the United States
Although China started late compared with the United States and other Western countries in the research of brain-computer interface technology, it also attaches great importance to the research of its related technologies, especially brain science and brain-like research.
In 2016, China's "Brain Project" was launched, which mainly includes two directions: brain science research oriented to exploring brain secrets and conquering brain diseases, and brain-like research oriented to establishing and developing artificial intelligence technology.
In march 2021, the "14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People's Republic of China and the Outline of Long-term Goals for 2035" also proposed that artificial intelligence and brain science are the national strategic scientific and technological forces, and brain-computer interface technology is one of the key technologies.
In-depth insights: the development trend of China's brain-computer interface industry
Western countries represented by the United States invested a lot of manpower, financial resources and materials to carry out research on brain-computer interface technology in the early days, and many industry unicorns emerged during this period, such as Neuralink, Synchron, BrainGate, etc., accompanied by increasing technical barriers.
Technical barriers can be mainly divided into talent barriers and core component barriers. On the one hand, brain-computer interface technology is an interdisciplinary discipline that requires many talents, including neurology, artificial intelligence, materials science, biology, etc., but domestic and foreign universities have not opened professional courses related to brain-computer interface, which has also led to a lack of talents in the field of brain-computer interface; on the other hand, the signal acquisition of brain-computer interface involves various materials and components, as well as chip algorithms and other software and hardware combination technologies, and the technical requirements are extremely high.
At present, the core components of the brain-computer interface platform still rely on imports, and its localization level needs to be improved in the future. If China wants to catch up in the field of brain-computer interfaces, or even overtake in curves, it should participate in the early stage of the development of the brain-computer interface industry and strengthen the localization rate of core components.
Focus on the enterprise
Through in-depth research on China's digital energy-related industry chain enterprises, Toubao suggests focusing on BrainCo, Brilliant, and Brainland Technology.
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