The social network acquires startup company CTRL-labs, which has developed a solution for controlling computers with the brain. The deal is said to be in the multi-billion class.
For four years, CTRL labs have been working on developing a wristband that will use brain signals to control computers.
When you want to touch the hand, for example, to move or click the mouse on the computer, neurons from the spine are sent out to the hand. The idea is for the bracelet to capture the signals on the road and translate them into instructions for a computer.
“This is what our interactions for us and ours can one day look like. It is changing the way we connect, ”Andrew Bosworth, responsible for Facebook’s virtual and augmented reality efforts, writes in a comment.
The new acquisition will be placed under Facebook Reality Labs, which is the development department that, among other things, works on the VR headsets in the Oculus series. Perhaps the technology developed under CTRL labs in the long term can be used as a new way of interacting with the company’s VR headset.
The price tag for CTRL labs should be between five and ten billion SEK, according to sources with insight into the Bloomberg deal. The company’s founder Thomas Reardon worked at Microsoft during the 1990s, where he created the Internet Explorer browser, among other things. He then left the IT industry for a long time to do his PhD in neuroscience.
