Your Future Home Will Be Mind-Controlled

Every morning you woke up, didn’t you just wish that your house knew your routine and prepared itself for you? Or when you’re about to go to bed and you’re having to turn everything off, ever wish the house would do it for you instead? Fret not, for your future home will be mind-controlled! Don’t believe me? Just ask Dr. Dean Aslam.

Dr. Aslam is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Michigan State University, and his current research is on mind-controlled appliances. This may not seem all too surprising to you anymore, given the recent spike in news stories of mind-controlled breakthroughs – from robotic limbs to actual thoughts – but in this case, Dr. Aslam hopes to turn your entire home into a mind-controlled appliance. How does he plan on doing this? With his biomedical inexpensive micro systems (BIMS).

Serious Wonder was able to talk briefly with Dr. Aslam via email, discussing his research on BIMS.

Dr. Aslam’s BIMS are really nothing more than electroencephalograms (EEG), sensors which pick up and translate electrical brain wave signals, which have been downsized to 110 micrometers of thick copper wire, emulating sewing thread. This allows him to easily embed the sensors into all kinds of fabric designs. When another set of BIMS are connected to other appliances throughout the house, if you want something to be done, simply think about it.

Using Dr. Aslam’s BIMS to create mind-controlled appliances, in the next 3-8 years he expects his invention to be used for any number of reasons:

• Personal 24-hour healthcare monitoring;
• Identifying early signs of neural problems;
• Mind-controlled prosthetics, robots, microdrones and smart home appliances; and
• Quantifying happiness and ego of human beings

FUTURE IMPLICATIONS

Imagine waking up in the morning and your house, knowing you’ve awoken, starts your Keurig coffee maker, warms up the shower, tells you the weather, recommends which clothing to wear, and if you’ve received any new emails in your inbox. It isn’t simply because you timed them at just the right moment of the day; rather it sensed your awakened presence and adhered to its programming. You didn’t have to actually think about it anymore; it just knew!

This is what Dr. Dean Aslam hopes to accomplish in the coming years – a symbiotic relationship between your mind and the place you call home. From there, not even the sky is the limit. Your mind will be in sync with that of nearby technologies, and will even be in sync with that of other minds. Verbal communication will become a thing of the past – a techno-telepathy, if you will. Mind-controlled appliances via your clothing is merely the next step in the development of a hive mind.

Photo Credit: Michigan State University / IEEE