A pioneering Toronto-based company is developing thought control technology, it says, will change the way people interact with their everyday surroundings.

Using brainwaves to control household appliances sounds like the stuff of science fiction.

But a Canadian company promises to make the fiction a reality.

Interaxon has developed a headset embedded with electrodes that reads the wearer's brain waves and processes them on a computer.

CEO Ariel Garten explains.

[Ariel Garten, Interaxon Chief Executive Officer]:
"These are my brainwaves and this is the decomposition of my wave into different bands. With the headset I can, using my brainwaves, make the dots either expand or contract."

Interaxon is developing a range of commercial products, such as in-flight entertainment systems and video games.

The company's home-based technology is already operational.

[Ariel Garten, Interaxon Chief Executive Officer]:
"One thing this system is good for is creating environments that are actually responsive. It's good for doing things that respond to you. Here, the lights and the blinds respond to the state that I'm in."

Interaxon's chief operating officer Trevor Coleman is working with various businesses to customise the technology.

Coleman hopes household appliances will eventually be able to read their owner's mind.

[Trevor Coleman, Interaxon Chief Operating Officer]:
"You can imagine people having a system that understands if you're having a bad day ,So when you come home your house knows that, and it's got a nice warm meal waiting for you and a cold beer in the fridge."

Within two years the company hopes to be selling headsets the size of a wireless bluetooth device.

[Ariel Garten, Interaxon Chief Executive Officer]:
"Ultimately this is a way we're all going to be engaging in the world on a daily basis. This is how we're going to be controlling our devices, potentially our automobiles, interacting with one another. This is the future for human computer interaction."