In a twist straight out of the movie Inception, a duo of developers from Brooklyn, New York, have built a sleeping mask designed to allow people to have lucid dreams that they can control.

While it may look like a standard sleeping mask, Remee has been billed as a special REM (Rapid Eye Movement) enhancing device that is supposed to help steer the sleeper into lucid dreaming by making the brain aware that it is dreaming.

The goal of the product is to allow people to have the dreams of their choice, from driving a race car to flying to having lunch with Abraham Lincoln.

In the hit movie Inception, directed by Christoper Nolan and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, a team of corporate spies enter a man’s dream to plant an idea into his subconscious. It is set in a world where technology exists to enter the human mind through dream invasion,

Nolan was said to have come up with the idea ten years ago.

The futuristic invention is the brainchild of Duncan Frazier and Steve McGuigan, both aged 30, who have started a company named Bitbanger Labs.

The two friends put up their project on the crowd funding website Kickstarter with the goal of raising $35,000. By this week, more than 6,550 people pledged $572,891 to fund Remee.

The inside of the sleeping mask features a series of six red LED lights that are too faint to wake the sleeper up, but visible enough for the brain to register them.

The lights can be programed to produce a sequence designed by the user.

Sleep stages are divided into two main categories: non-REM and REM. People go back and forth between these stages throughout the night, with REM stages, where most dreaming occurs, lasting the longest towards morning.

Remee apparently notices these longer REM stages and ‘enters’ the dream via the flashing lights. The device will wait for four to five hours for the sleeper to get into the heavy REM stages before the red lights turn on.

The idea is simple: you are playing a perfect round of golf in a dream, and you see a pattern of red lights flashing in the distance.

Because the pattern is in a particular sequence, it would signal to you that you are dreaming, not unlike the totem object in Inception.

Remee will display light patterns for 15 to 20 seconds, with a second delay of 15 minutes between each signal. During non-REM sleep, the lights are unlikely to affect the user.

In terms of user safety and possible health risks, Mr McGuigan said In a phone interview with Mail Online on Sunday that he has not received any reports of problems associated with the mask.

Sources and more information:

• Remee Sleep Mask Allows You To Control Your Dreams [Video]

Lucid dreaming is not a common occurrence for most slumbering people, yet two 30-year-old investors have created a sleep mask they claim can make your dreams a reality or at least controllable. Known as the Remee Sleep Mask the gadget uses specially timed LED lights to notify you of your dreams. According to the inventors the mask contains six red…

• Controlling your dreams is now possible with a sleeping mask: Remee

• Control Your Dreams …by Sleep Mask

• Morpheus Mask: Be your own dream driver

• Wear This Mask and Control Your Dreams?

• Remee Lucid Dreaming Mask will allow you to have lucid dreams for $80