Vincent sent this in weeks ago, but I've been all over the place. Maybe this is related to BoingBoing's brain-scanning stuff from the military that Cory posted today; maybe not. Either way, it's cool: a bike helmet type thing with a brain scanner attached:
The first aspect demonstrated was facial recognition. Without a camera of any sort, Emotiv's headset is able to detect a variety of facial expression. Smiles, frowns, open and closed mouth are detected in real time, as is the direction the wearer's eyes are looking. It even detects blinks and winks.
Okay. Whoa.
The second aspect we saw was the headset's ability to judge states of excitement or calm..[...]..Emotiv's reps suggested a variety of gameplay elements that could be based upon this recognition, from mood-adaptive soundtracks to unlocking berserker modes in first person shooters on the basis of the player getting amp'ed up on real adrenaline.
Here's the third and final completely wild ability:
By focusing upon physical movements, users are able to translate their thoughts into movement in a 3D virtual environment. Push, pull, slide, rotate, lift, drop, and six other motions can currently be detected by the Emotive tech.
The article goes into detail about the demo'ing engineer building stonehenge by just using his arms, and thought commands.
Ordinarily I would think this was a complete scam, except it was demoed at GDC, and lunchtime conversation today included stories of someone livehacking someone else's embedded finger-RFID...
(Thanks Vincent!)
It's still pretty crude, but cruder systems have been used as controls for game and game-like systems before. There have been a number of games that use bio-feedback devices to measure how relaxed the players are (the most relaxed person eventually winning). I was reminded of these by one of the demos for Emotiv's system, which included a game play element that was activated when the player was angry (I can't help but think that relying on people being relaxed is a healthier option).
Previous attempts at "hands free" control systems relied on people learning to alter easily detectable brain patterns (alpha waves, for instance) to control a cursor. What's really interesting about this beyond controlling games is that having feedback on mental processes allows you to learn to control those processes in ways that would be difficult or impossible otherwise. "Brain Age" is just the beginning.
Posted by: bob | March 27, 2007 at 01:24
I'm completely fascinated by you, Bob - you know everything. Who ARE you? :)
Posted by: Alice | March 27, 2007 at 04:14
Yeah, Journey to Wild Divine came with the "LifeStone" which tracked pulse, temp, and GSR (I think).
I was at an Emotiv demo earlier this week, and they still do the pattern recognition thing for some actions (you can map something like 12 actions total). There's also emotional (Excitement Level) and expressive (picking up facial expressions, which it was actually quite good at). This could be much fun for virtual worlds.
Posted by: qDot | March 27, 2007 at 06:15
If it's use alpha and beta to perform action then isn't it the system train you? I think what Emotiv does is let you train the system. Must be something diferent!
Posted by: orb | March 27, 2007 at 07:12
Cool... I get to be the first to say "Think in Russian... THINK IN RUSSIAN!!!"
Posted by: Matt | March 27, 2007 at 08:58
I can't believe I'm the first to notice it bears an uncanny (oy) resemblance to Cerebro from X-MEN. Did Magneto have a hand in building this one, too?
Posted by: vjb2 | March 27, 2007 at 16:38
This is insane! Anyone who puts this on deserves what happens when it goes wrong, or the give away there precious though process over to be analyzed by some mad scientist. I mean arn't u just better off going outside and experienceing with the brain u already got? whats next the neck plug?
Posted by: WoW | June 27, 2007 at 00:50
where can buy this?
Posted by: tom | January 08, 2008 at 22:22