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Making Joysticks Obsolete
Alien54 writes "NASA has been taking a beating about their in ability to get the really important things done. ABCNEWS has a story that reveals exactly what they have been working on: Computer control of things like joystick interfaces and keyboards by reading the muscles directly. No more joysticks or keyboards. Just gestures to control, say, an aircraft. A more advanced gaming interface indeed! There is also a short video showing the current state of the art." Imagine what this device could do for the por-- I mean, gaming industry.
It's been a few years since I've watched Firefox, but IIRC it was the weapon systems that were thought controlled. And it required him to think in Russian, so I don't think that muscle sense was part of it.
I tried something similar out at a macworld several years ago. They were controlling a sega racing game with thoughts. You wore something on your head to control the speed, and steered like normal. As I recall, you got calmed down to speed it up, and got mad to slow it down.
A friend who was with with me said it best, when he thought about his girlfriend, the car sped up. When he thought about his job in tech support, it came to a screeching halt.
If it's used for scrolling, then porn is going to be a dizzying experience.
Imagine it: your plane's pilot suddenly has to sneeze, or he develops a nervous tic, or he has a muscle spasm.
"Folk's, I apologize for the rough flying back there, the pilot had to scratch an itch..."
What fun!
The only reason the corollary benefits of space exploration are even mentioned is so that people who don't understand the fundamental human imperative of exploration can be snookered out of their (approximately) $1.00 tax contribution to the space program.
The cost for space exploration is trivial. The benefits are uncountably huge. The tax revenues from the telecom industry (which would not exist in any recognizable form without modern satellite communication) from one single year would cover NASA's budget back to 1960.
So, the money's REALLY for space exploration. The rest are just freebies. You're trying to put the cart before the horse.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
This is a great technology for people who are physically impaired in some way. However, I don't think that pilots will go for it. There is just too much to be said for having a tactile interface. You need force feedback when flying, or else you could end as an oily smear on the side of a mountain. It may make sense to use some form of this technology for specific functions such as radar. Imagine being able to get a target lock by just keeping in eye contact with your target.
Despite the usefullness of this technology, it will not soon or easily displace a good old fashioned stick
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Opportunities multiply as they are seized. --Sun-Tzu
About a month ago I watched a television show about people with disabilities. During the show they had this mind control based program attached to a person's head which allowed them to think of which way to turn things. The program was dropped by the USAF (or they said it was) but continues for paraplegics.
I don't recall the complete set up they had, but it seemed like electrical wiring attached to the backside of the persons head allowed them to think about moving objects in a specific direction, sent signals to their wheelchairs or in another case implanted motors in one crippled persons hand to commit the actions.
Anyways the USAF was testing it previously since they were stating that pilots had too many buttons, controls, gauges to monitor, so they were looking for alternative methods of having them manuever the aircraft when they were flying. If I'm not mistaken it (the technology) was highly used in NASA as well.
So aside from all this semi informative stuff. I would rather have NASA spend time fscking around to get things done properly then to keep having them waste money crashing, and losing aircraft.
2600 being run by Peter Pan
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Here's the information to what I was speaking about for those interested in the above thread I posted.
http://www.brainfingers.com/technical.htm extreme thanks to Michael (don't know if he wants his last name posted) for pointing me in the right direction with the link.
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To make the obligitory Douglas Adams quote for this thread, you need to sit annoyingly still to keep listening to the same station. If you controlled an airplane like this, you'd soon have the first case of an airliner crash caused by a flea.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
It really works already. Also they were showing interfaces directly into the brain with an implanted microchip that let deaf people hear.
The future is now.
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
The interesting part of all this stuff is the material the controller is made of.
:>
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Some cut-off spandex from a jumpsuit, and coat button snaps sewn on backwards for the electrodes to connect to.
NASA Engineers with duct tape and a toolshed can do pretty much anything.
BTW, For info on the Neural Engineering project at NASA Ames who is working on this project, see The Neural Engineering group
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Basic frustration: touch feedback is much faster than visual feedback. Visual is limited to maybe 2Hz; tactile is maybe 10x that. This is one reason gloves-and-goggles virtual reality systems are so painful to use.
True force feedback is very effective. Most of the stuff on the game market is treated as a subwoofer, not a real force feedback device, so you can't judge by that.
One of the neatest force feedback devices I've come across was from the now-defunct Kraft Telerobotics. They had a backhoe you could control with a force-feedback handgrip. The feedback was good enough that you could feel what you were digging, and could reach down into a trench full of muddy water and dig around pipes by touch. Unfortunately, they got into NASA contracts instead of heavy construction and were never heard from again.
Just imagine what carpal tunnel will be like after this kind of thing gets underway. Carpal tunnel in the forarms/hands/fingers is bad enough already. Just imagine if you get home from work and you're too brain-dead to find your house key or remember your spouses' name. This kind of thing could be pretty devastating if your mind works the same way as your body.
that muscles like to work against resitence. Close your eyes and move your arm about. How aware are you REALLY about just where it is?
Not very.
Yet every nerve ending in your skin is highly tuned to sense pressure changes amounting to fractions of an ounce, even when the load gets over 100 lbs. of force.
We are inherently desinged for pressure feedback, not position feedback.
KFG
"Dude, check out THAT guy! I've never seen anyone jump side to side that fast before...."
Would certainly make it a bitch to cruise pr0n though, wouldnt it? the screen wont stop moving up and down! :P
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
No more joysticks or keyboards. Just gestures to control, say, an aircraft.
This would be great for the Air Force. Just use your middle finger to fire a missile at your enemy! Now, the middle finger is really the way to say "fsck you."
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Check in...(OK!) Check out...(OK!)
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Humans spend the first several years of their lives learning how to interact with the world by moving things. Now we want to throw that away and make them interact by moving muscles or thinking of white elephants or whatever. Why? I guess on a space suit it might be nice because it is compact. But for most people I see this as only a niche product. The article seemed to say that it is cool that they are doing this, they didn't really go much into why.
And have they thought about how they're going to seal the controls to keep the vaseline from leaking into everything?
Seriously, I can just see the humans of the future as big blobs just laying in their Poetic Tech Chair twitching and jerking their way through life with attendant Aibos and Palm-creatures zipping around them. Actual contact won't be necessary as we can stop and smell the roses right on the information highway.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
I saw a segment on this on some news show -- it slips my mind what it was. Anyway, watching the guy demonstrate the technology, I have to say, it looked pretty uncomfortable. He moved his hand in ways that would surely cause carpal tunnel after prolonged use. It looked like he was bending his wrist to a degree that I don't think would be necessary while using a joystick.
Also, when it comes to using a joystick, people can readjust their hands on the controller if they become uncomfortable. As far as I know, you'd always have to move your hand in the same way to get this technology to work.
-- dR.fuZZo
Most folks here seem to think that sneezing or other involuntary actions would cause catastrophic failure or crashes. Not the case (at least not in the case of NASA's 757 simulator (some earlier slashdot post.)
The neuroelectrical signals generated by your arm muscles (motor units) are rather unique per movement. (These signals are called MUAPS - motor unit activation potentials) I.e. you flex your fingers in a fist --> some signal, flex your biceps --> some different signal. The reason is that the resultant signal is an amalgamation of the firing of several different muscle groups (motor units) at different times, and with differing geospatial orientation (from the reference point of the electrodes).
So when you're moving your arm around, the electrodes are picking up a steady stream of these MUAP signals, which may overlap. Neural nets and some quick per-user-basis learning tests can easily separate out the important MUAPS from the non important ones. And also, the involuntary muscle contractions generated by a sneeze (or whatever) would be easy for the control system to pick out and ignore.
Um, the problem is that you don't know before hand which problems will be solved by which research...
Sure we can specifically target things like AI for ocean probes, but what's from stopping someone just like you saying 'That's sooo expensive, why not just do AI for automatic vacuum cleaners instead?'
The difference being that for Hoover or Eureka, good enough is what sells, and AI research will stop when the vacuums figure out how to navigate, plug themselves into an outlet, and not get destroyed by running into the street. AI research for Mars, or even the ocean, will hopefully design for robustness, learning capability, flexibility, and reliability.
How do we know that traveling to Mars doesn't unlock some sort of cancer cure as a side effect of making humans more fit in space? How do we know we won't cure baldness or the common cold by designing anti-radiation treatments? How do we know that we won't find the secret to room temperature superconducting electronics in the design of a lightweight yet sturdy heat transfer support structure (since there is no convection or radiative heat loss, you have to use other means)?
There is applied research, where you know the problem and try to find an answer, and there is pure research, where you don't know the problem, and thus finding an answer is as much about finding the problem as anything else. Going into space offers a lot of pure research problems; materials sciences, medicine, genetics, biology, physics, mechanical engineering, electronics, etc. How do we know how they all fit? If we did, we would already know how to solve problems and questions; we don't, so the public has to be satisfied with the fact that such lofty, grand, and otherwise pointless expeditions do have many positive secondary effects.
Traveling to Mars may unlock the secrets of buckyball transistors, or new lubricants that use buckyballs, or whatever. We don't know, yet.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Oh my God! For providing the best recorder stimuli, the best porn stars would have Parkinson's disease!
That's horrible!
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--hongpong.com
Damn it i'm a bastard.
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--hongpong.com
In all seriousness, electromechanical prosthetic limbs have been around for years. Patients learn to control them through flexing muscles in the remaining limb, for example, a prosthetic hand can be controlled by fleximg muscles in the patients upper arm. This is relitively old technology.
This is a new application (at least for the consumer market) with the exception of a few poorly recieved gaming devices like afore mentioned power glove.
--CTH
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--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
There is a great use for this technology and you all missed it. This would be THE interface for hand helds. No more micro keyboards!
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
As someone who works with a related technology (Brain Actuated Technology), I wanted to address some of the concerns I've seen a few people raise. Before I get too deeply into the discussion, I'll refer you to a previous reponse I made to the "Surfing The Net With Brainwaves?" article. If you are curious to see what I have said already about the subject, check it out.
I'm a software engineer that works with a device called a Cyberlink that allows you to control the mouse cursor (and other peripherals) using a combination of Brain/Body signals (EEG, EMG & EOG).
From the electrode arrangement in the NASA picture I saw, it looks like they using EMG (electromyograph) signals to detect discreet electrical impulses for specific muscles. There is a lot of electrical energy involved in actuating the muscles in your body, the hard part is figuring which muscle signals of the multitudes are the ones you care about.
One of the most difficult aspects of these types of technologies is resolving a "rest state". Energy is expended even when you are trying to hold a bodypart, like your arm, still. If the movement of a joystick/mouse/wheel was mapped directly electrical activity in your arm, wrists and hands you would have to worry about keeping them stationary to begin with so you wouldn't generate interference (and cause the device to move left when you wish it to stay where it is). Electrically, we are very noisy...
If you aren't concentrating, it may cause control to "drift". For example, if I move the mouse around with my hand and I let go, the mouse cursor usually will remain exactly where you left it on the screen. But with devices that use raw biosignals, it is hard to "turn-off" electrical signals present in your body so that the device interpreting them will stop reacting to them. When I use the brain actuated mouse interface with the Cyberlink, its kinda hard to keep the mouse from NOT moving. Sure, I can move it up/down/left/right when I want to, but when I don't want it to move, it is hard to prevent it from "drifting" slightly in some direction. These are aspects of the technology I am working on fixing. As such, I am intimately familiar with most of the difficulties involved.
In the case of picking up impulses meant for your hands and arm, it becomes even harder because we use our hands all the time for other tasks.
But the good news is that these things can be tuned. There are ways around these limitations and work is being done to resolve these issues. I suffer from tendonitis in my wrists, so *I* at least have a very vested interest in making this technology work. :) This technology is tremendously useful for people with physical disabilities and there is work being done to make the technology more appealing to able-bodied persons as well. Your concerns are duly noted. (by me, at least).
If you have additional questions or concerns for someone who is familiar with this technology, feel free to drop me an email and I will do what I can to answer your questions. :)
Mmm, brain-controlled railguns... ;P
PS: An interesting side-note is that it seems to take around 100 milliseconds (1/10 of a second) for a signal to be sent from your brain to get to your index finger and trigger movement *click*. By using a reflex tester (http://www.reflexgame.com/) the quickest I can seem to consistantly react to the screen changing color and click 'stop' seems to be 0.33 seconds. While using the Cyberlink (with electrodes on my forehead) I am able to consistantly react in only 0.22 seconds. So, my reaction time is about 1/10 of a second faster if I don't have to wait for the signal to travel all the way down to my finger. I'm already pretty dangerous in games like Unreal and Quake, but now I can fire that much faster. It is, however, a very odd feeling. You fire faster than you are expecting to. Its surprising. I keep thinking "Whoa, I fired already?" Eventually, we'll all be able to be LPBs of a different variety. ;P
Cheers,
Michael
Although not for the disabled, if you just want a head controlled mouse (for 100 bux), then see the Natural Point.
-Kraft
-Kraft
Live and let live
by a project called The Human Instrumentality Project. They made giant robots which function through a cerebral-nerve link with their operators. The pilots connect through the A10 neuron system of the brain. They can connect through their plug suits and the medium of liquid known as LCL.
Why you guys rolling on the floor?
About 3 years ago, I had the privelege of trying out a neurological interface system that was being developed by a private company in massechusetts. The system was being demonstrated through a two dimesional skiing game. The user put his finger in a sort of sensor tube, with electrodes along its length, and the skier changed direction according to their muscular twitches. The actual orientation of the controller finger didn't matter, but after a few minutes, you found that by thinking "left, left," really hard, your body would actually make the skier move. The tech was pretty cool, and, simialar to this NASA program, a way to interface the human mind more closely to a machine.
Unfortunately for this program, the ski program differs greatly from flying a combat, or even civilian aircraft. Since so many muscle movements are involuntary (what if the pilot sneezes?) The type of close interface provided by a neuromuscular interface is not ideal for an immediate reactive function. In the Apache gunship, a combat helicopter used extensively by the army, in-helmet sensors track the pilot's eye movements for hands free targeting. However, because the weapons don't automatically deploy, the gunner/pilot must consciously fire, and there is a buffer between the eye interface, dangerous consequences. A direct link flight system as examined in the article lacks a requirement for conscious authentication, and in my opinion, therefore makes the aircraft far too volatile, and prone to accidental adjustment. I know I sent the skier crashing into the trees more than once!
My Karma is so good, I'm the Dalai Lama...or something.
Me: "How many times do I have to tell you... put the beer down."
When you move a mouse, you can feel it...there may not be any "force feedback" per se, but you are able to rest your hand on it, and it holds up your arms. Doing direct muscle interactions might be nice, but wouldn't it get fatiguing to hold your arms in mid-air, or jerk your hand around with nothing underneath it?
And now for something completely different...a man with three buttocks.
if you know anything about science you would know that anything in your imagination can kill you, so by extension, if you think you've bumped into something then you would have to stop moving.
similarly, when like a fleet of kamikazee F-16s piloted by ghost velociraptors shoot at the robot's head, you would actually bleed from your own head.
it's so obvious if you think about it momentarily.
: Noooo! Damn NASA stole our gesture movement! It was so original, and inventive, and was destined to win us a commanding lead in the browser wars!
: Well, sir, actually NASA isn't affecting our market share. After all, we too just stole the ideas from some callow Norwegian boy. And, "browser wars?" that is so passe. I believe the correct, *modern* term is "NapB2B-JavaRIAA.com"