Facebook Inc. agreed to acquired CTRL-Labs, a
technology startup that is building software to let people control a digital avatar
using only their thoughts. The world’s largest social network is paying between
$500 million and $1 billion.
The closely held four-year-old start-up, which
has dozens of employees and has raised tens of millions in venture capital,
uses a bracelet to measure neuron activity in a subject’s arm to determine
movement that person is thinking about, even if they aren’t physically moving.
That neuron activity is then translated into movement on a digital screen.
Technology like CTRL-Labs’s may someday be a
crucial part of products like augmented reality glasses, where a user might
want to control a computer without the need for buttons or a keyboard.
Facebook has been pushing deeper into augmented
reality technology, including the development of a hands-free pair of AR
glasses. In 2017, it announced a “brain-computer interface" that could
someday let people turn their thoughts into actual text on a screen by
monitoring signals in the brain. The CTRL-Labs technology is attempting to
solve a similar problem.
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