A preliminary survey on the perception of marketability of brain-computer interfaces and initial development of a repository of BCI companies

Abstract

The marketability of BCI applications may greatly influence the decisions of goverments, the industry and academia. In this paper we first explored with a survey when respondents (N = 145), who were present at the 4th International BCI Meeting, expect that different BCI applications will become commercially available. Second, we surveyed how well existing BCI companies are known to respondents. Third, we compared the findings with our own preliminary overview of the marketability of BCIs and our repository of 28 companies. Respondents were optimistic about the marketability of BCIs for healthy users and users who need assistive technology (AT), but 72.4% of the respondents was unaware that companies already exist which market BCI's. Based on a preliminary market overview we cautiously suggest that optimism in relation to applications for healthy users is more appropriate than in relation to BCI-based AT. In future we plan surveys among a broader range of stakeholders and more profound analyses of the market.