Section: New Results

Teegi, a tangible EEG interface for scientific outreach

Participants : Thibault Lainé, Renaud Gervais, Jérémy Frey, Hugo Germain, Fabien Lotte, Martin Hachet

Teegi is an interactive systems that combines electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings and tangible interaction in order to let novices learn about how their brain works. By displaying EEG activity in real time on a support that is easy to manipulate and to comprehend, Teegi is a good tool for scientific outreach, that raises public interest.

Figure 11. Teegi is a “Tangible EEG interface” that displays cerebral activity in real time by the mean of electroencephalography. A new robotized version can move and react accordingly to the brain patterns of the user, helping to explain to novices how the brain works.

While last year we developed a semi-spherical display based on LEDs, we push the project further during 2016 and built a complete autonomous puppet (Figure 11). The robot can move its two hands independently or its feet, and it can close its eyes. Beside the display of EEG activity, Teegi can react accordingly to the brain patterns recorded in real time from the user.

We demonstrated this new prototype in various occasions over the year, during public events such as “Fête de la Science” in La Cité des Sciences in Paris, a manifestation that gathered thousands of visitors (See Section 10.3 "Popularization").