Emotiv Inc. is a privately held bio-informatics and technology company developing and manufacturing wearable

electroencephalography Electroencephalography (EEG) is a method to record an electrogram of the spontaneous electrical activity of the brain. The biosignal, bio signals detected by EEG have been shown to represent the postsynaptic potentials of pyramidal neurons in ...

(EEG) products including neuroheadsets,

software development kit A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific t ...

s (SDK), software, mobile apps, and data products. Founded in 2011 by

Tan Le Tan Le (Vietnamese: ''Lê Thị Thái Tần'', born 20 May 1977) is a Vietnamese-born Australian telecommunications entrepreneur and a co-founder of Emotiv. She was named the 1998 Young Australian of the Year. Career As president of the Vietna ...

and Geoff Mackellar, the company is headquartered in San Francisco, U.S.A. with facilities in

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

Hanoi Hanoi ( ; ; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Vietnam, second-most populous city of Vietnam. The name "Hanoi" translates to "inside the river" (Hanoi is bordered by the Red River (Asia), Red and Black River (Asia), Black Riv ...

and Ho Chi Minh City.

History

Tan Le founded a separate company called

Emotiv Systems Emotiv Systems is an Australian electronics innovation company developing technologies to evolve human computer interaction incorporating non-conscious cues into the human-computer dialogue to emulate human to human interaction. Developing brai ...

with Nam Do, Allan Snyder, and Neil Weste, in Australia in 2003. The work resulted in the first version of the EPOC neuroheadset released in 2009, one of the first mobile EEG device available to the market. In 2010, Tan Le split from the partnership to establish a US entity, Emotiv Lifesciences Inc. with Geoffrey Mackellar. In December 2013, Emotiv Lifesciences officially changed its name to Emotiv Inc. The original EPOC has been used in research and shown to deliver acceptable quality EEG for research purposes. In particular, independent research groups at

Macquarie University Macquarie University ( ) is a Public university, public research university in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Founded in 1964 by the New South Wales Government, it was the third university to be established in the Sydney metropolitan area. ...

and Flinders University reported that it has comparable signal quality compared to other research-level devices. The company designed Emotiv Insight, a 5-channel headset, and raised capital to develop and manufacture the device and supporting software via crowdfunding site

Kickstarter Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...

. The campaign raised $1,643,117 against the original target of $100,000 USD and earned an Edison Award in April 2014. In 2013, the company redesigned and released Emotiv EPOC+, a wireless, 14-channel mobile EEG system to target professional use in research and industrial applications with upgraded electronics including 9-axis inertial sensors, Bluetooth Smart and an improved power source. In October 2015, Emotiv Insight was made available for general release. In 2015, Emotiv joined the Disney/Techstars Accelerator program and presented at "Demo Day" in October the same year.

Business

Current headset models

In 2013, Emotiv Inc. released EPOC+, which is a research-oriented wireless headset that records 14-channel EEG. Unlike conventional EEG systems that use sticky gels, it uses saline based wet sensors. There are two reference sensors at P3 and P4 locations. The EPOC+ measures both EEG and 9-axis motion data. Data is transmitted wirelessly through Bluetooth. The Emotiv Insight was made available for general release in 2015. It is a 5-channel wireless EEG device covering frontal, temporal and parieto-occipital locations around the brain. It is designed for everyday use by individuals looking to understand and improve their own brains. It utilizes proprietary polymer sensors that are hydrophilic; they pull moisture from the air and skin.

Software and SDK

Emotiv provides a free companion app called Insight App for users to monitor their emotions. There are also pay-to-download games such as Arena, which allows users to experience mental commands. EMOTIV provides a two-tier SDK for the EPOC: Community and Premium versions. The EMOTIV EPOC research & developer community has grown to over 70,000 people and spans globally The 14 channel wireless EPOC+ is designed for research and brain-computer interface use, and EEG can be obtained with an Emotiv Pure.EEG subscription.

Controversy

Emotiv has made access to raw data a separate paid option and implemented countermeasures to deter third-party software interoperating with headsets (more precisely their USB dongles; the project authors believe that the data flowing between a dongle and a headset is unencrypted) produced by Emotiv. Despite that, free software has been developed that accesses the data captured by a headset.

References

External links

*{{Official website, http://emotiv.com/ Electroencephalography Wearable devices Electronics companies established in 2011 2011 establishments in California American companies established in 2011