OpenBCI Teams Up With Varjo on Biosensing VR Headset

This morning, neurotechnology startup OpenBCI announced a new partnership with premium headset maker Varjo. Galea, a long in-development headset finally seeing a limited commercial run, melds the latest in VR tech with a wide range of OpenBCI’s sensors.

Galea is based on Varjo’s Aero headset, a newer entrant at the higher end of PC VR’s consumer market. Especially compared to other non-invasive brain-sensing devices like the HP Omnicept headset or NextMind’s developer kit, Galea takes a kitchen sink approach. The result is a headset that costs more than $20,000 and combines Varjo’s crisp VR displays and proprietary eye-tracking tech with more than a dozen individual sensors distributed between the face pad and a strap that rests on the wearer’s scalp. Galea is only really targeting a small pool of researchers and designers today, and it shows how far off the consumer applications of some of these sensors could be.