OpenBCI partners with Varjo for Galea BCI system

In an unexpected move, OpenBCI has announced its partnership with Varjo for its innovative Galea BCI (Brain-Computer Interface) system: the device will be integrated with Varjo Aero and preorders for it are starting today.

OpenBCI’s Galea

You know that I’m a huge fan of brain-computer interfaces, that’s why I am following very closely the developments of Galea, a new software+hardware framework for VR headsets developed by OpenBCI, one of the leading industries in the field. OpenBCI promises Galea will be a little revolution for non-invasive BCIs, because it won’t feature only the classical EEG sensors that are integrated into all the most common BCI devices for XR, but also a long list of sensors whose data, fused together, is able to give better insights on what is the psychological status of the user. As Conor Russomanno, CEO of OpenBCI, told me when I interviewed him:

Galea is a hardware and software platform for bringing advanced biometrics to HMDs. The Galea hardware is designed to be integrated into existing HMDs and is the first device that simultaneously collects data from the wearer’s brain, eyes, heart, skin, and muscles. Our current version includes sensors for EEG, EOG, EMG, PPG, and EDA, with the option to include image-based eye tracking as well. On the software side, we’ll be enabling users to bring tightly time-locked data into development engines like Unity and by building on open-source protocols like BrainFlow, the raw data will be available in most common programming languages as well.

Galea is the culmination of OpenBCI’s six years (seven in February [2021]!) of research and development in the BCI space, and was created with the goal of providing fully immersive and personalized experiences through various streams of biometric feedback. This product makes it possible to better comprehend how an individual reacts to digital worlds and experiences in real-time.

The revolution of Galea comes from the fact that its hardware can read many different physiological data of the user, and its software can merge them together to create an outcome about the psychological status of the user which is more reliable than the other systems on the market (like NextMind, Neurable, etc…). As for the information that this kind of system can infer from the user, Conor quoted these possibilities:

Attention, stress, and cognitive load are some of the more proven examples of more subjective states that can now be quantified with physiological data. Emotional classification is another application that more and more researchers and companies are pursuing with this type of data.

OpenBCI has always stressed how Galea has been designed with comfort in mind: on the website, you can read that its “conductive polymer active electrodes” offer one of the world’s most comfortable dry EEG systems. Usually, EEG sensors have rigid plastic spikes that touch your skull and can be uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time, while OpenBCI seems to have solved this issue with a special material.

As you can see, we are talking about a very interesting product, which could be employed by research centers, psychologists, rehab clinics, and all those places where it could be useful to correlate the psychological state of a user to the VR experience he is trying. For instance, during exposure therapy, knowing how much is the stress of the patient while he is trying an experience may be useful to calibrate the situations where he is put in: if a user is afraid of spiders, I can make spiders go closer to his hands in VR to make him used to their presence, but when the system tells me that the stress is becoming too big, I could make the spiders stop even before he tells me about his discomfort. Imagine also its use for training, where the training experience can detect the current status of the user and change the teaching method depending on it: for instance, if I’m too tired, it could go slower and repeat the concepts many times.

And I see some possible implications for games, as well: imagine a horror VR game that calibrates the jumpscares depending on your psychological state: if you are too scared, the game starts taking it more lightly, while when you feel too confident, it could provide a terrible jumpscare. This would be useful to create the perfect state of always-scared-but-never-too-much that is the ideal state in all horror games.

You now understand the potential of Galea. It’s not the final BCI solution, but it’s a good step forward for all the ecosystem.

Galea on Varjo Aero

OpenBCI has announced today, before the start of AWE, that the Galea system will be integrated into Varjo Aero headsets. You can see from the following animation how the Varjo Aero is modified to add all the sensors required by Galea (look at the facemask and the back of the headset):

The news surprised me because until now Galea had always been marketed as an add-on for the Valve Index. Gabe Newell in the last months has also been a huge advocate for brain-computer interfaces, stating that they are the future of gaming and computer applications in general. So when I’ve read that actually the first headset it was shipping with was a Varjo Aero, I was very surprised.

I think it makes sense, though: Varjo Aero is one of the headsets offering the highest clarity on the market, plus it comes from a brand like Varjo with a high reputation in serving business customers, which is exactly the target that OpenBCI has now with Galea. Valve Index is still a consumer headset, with also some RMA problems. Furthermore, Varjo’s prices set the expectations for the premium price of Galea, too.

OpenBCI has also announced that will distribute Galea SDKs with ready-to-use building blocks for accessing the sensor data inside of Unity, Python, and several other common development environments.

Price and availability

Pre-orders for Galea open today to the thousands of companies, developers, and researchers who have already applied to the Galea Beta Program. The remaining units will be available for pre-order by the general public (i.e. who is not in the Beta Program) on July 1, 2022. The company plans to manufacture 250 systems as part of the Galea Beta Program and will be making these units available for pre-order in batches of 50 units. Earlier batches will ship first, approximately 12 months from when each batch closes.

As for the price, it is not publicly disclosed, but some birds told me on Twitter that it should be in the ballpark of many thousands dollars. It is not official info, so take it with a grain of salt. It is a lot of money, but consider that it is in the same ballpark as some enterprise haptic gloves, so it is not a price completely out of the market. And we are talking about an innovative BCI device that can be useful to many companies and healthcare entities which usually have a very high budget to spend on hardware, so it may make sense. Of course, as an indie developer that wanted to buy it to experiment with it as a hobby, I am a bit disappointed by it, and I guess you too. But this is something we are already used to in the XR communities…

You can anyway go to the official website of the headset to have more info about it and to request an official quote. Have fun with BCIs!

(Header image by OpenBCI)