Teegi: Tangible EEG Interface

Have you ever been thrilled by the possibilities unleashed by the tools that record brain activity? Or, on the opposite, are you reluctant to these devices that seem to sense your deepest thoughts?

Then meet Teegi, a puppet that displays in real-time your brain activity.

EEG (electroencephalography) is used to record electrical signals onto the scalp. EEG is perfectly safe and let users investigate by themselves how their brain works. Teegi helps to lower the barrier between novice users and systems that are often complex to manipulate. Moreover, this cute character will put at ease those who are sensible to stressful setups (wires and electrodes are not everybody’s cup of tea). All the computings – and computers! – are masked so users could focus on the interaction.

Our work consists in a multi-disciplinary approach that combines spacial augmented reality, signal processing and inquiry based learning. The result is an entertaining device that can get users hands on neuroscience and prevent false knowledge to grow from misunderstanding – no device will ever read thoughts!

Beside our scientific work, we also took Teegi out of the lab, for example at the IIT Techfest – see the quite hypnotizing time-lapse video below, 8 hours of show and hundreds of attendees in one minute.

Currently we are working on version of Teegi that will be more practical to use in the field, with all the electronics embedded into the puppet.

Teegi disco, v1

More details on the team’s website, as well as on Renaud’s page. You may also be interested by the tangible proxy that comes after: Tobe.

Associated publications