Slashdot Mirror
Brain Controlled Tightrope Video Game Shown
Bob Sherpowski writes "According to CBBC News, they have come up with a 'game' that you control directly with your brain waves. University College Dublin researchers have designed a game where you are trying to get a monster to walk across a tightrope - if he leans one way or the other you have to concentrate on a box on either side of the tightrope to make him tip the other way. It's still in research and it's not for sale yet but it's the first step. "
I just can't wait for the first virus to be unleashed on something like this. Instead of the device sending OUT information, it would start sending information IN.
;-)
In all seriousness, I'm overwhelmed with Doubleclick ads now, I don't need them being inputted directly.
God help us if Microsoft gets ahold of this. Instead of, "Where do you want to go tomorrow", it's "What do we want you to think about today".
Btw, what happens if you're using that device and you happen to catch a glimpse of Janet Jackson's Half Time show? Is it suddenly blown straight off your forehead? LOL!
this will train out brain waves to all be the same so they can control us with better accuracy and reliability!!!!
DON'T BUY IT!!!!!!
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
The Matrix, v0.1.
and that would be brains.
"Strip Poker"!
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
I don't have a brain you insensitive clod!
You must think *in russian*
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
Does that mean teh player also dies, cause of the whole "what the brain thinks" issue?
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
There's already a game in existence that is controlled by one's brain--it's called life...
don't download, this stuff is gonna contain subliminal messages making us buy M$ mu5l1m!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
GO VEGAN!! www.peta.com
i mean we also have the Mind juggling monkeys.
what i'd really like is a tv that turned down the volume slowly, and then turned off after i fall asleep.
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
binary discrimination? soooo state of the art...
Here
Kevin Warwick at the University of Reading has been working in this field for years, mainly with flight simulators. Considering this is a research project, and not a commercial or military one, I fail to see why this is news. Is it just another example of Americans plagiarising someone else's work and claiming it as their own?
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This is an important warning to all slashdotters. CmdrTaco has been luring people (mainly underage males) into the slashdot compound to eat his "special taco". You may be wondering what CmdrTaco's "special taco" is. You will be wishing that you hadn't been wondering after you finish reading this post. To make his "special taco", CmdrTaco takes a taco shell and shits on it. He then adds lettuce, takes out his tiny withered dick (otherwise known as his "Commander"), puts his "special taco sauce" on it which means he jacks off on the taco, and adds a compound to make the person who eats the taco unconcious. Of course, the compound does not make the person unconcous until the taco is fully eaten. Thus CmdrTaco force feeds the taco to the unsuspecting victim. After all, who would knowingly eat shit and CmdrTaco's jizz. After the victim is unconcous, he is held against his will and used for CmdrTaco's nefarious homosexual purposes. This includes shoving taco shells up the victim's ass, taco snotting, and getting JonKatz involved. Trust me, you do not want JonKatz anywhere near your unconcious body. Also, rumor has it CmdrTaco is looking for a new goatse.cx guy. Don't let it be you!!!!! The last thing you may be wondering is how this goes along with "taco snotting", or what "taco snotting" is. George WIPO Bush and The WIPO Troll have been doing considerable work explaining what "taco snotting" is. Please see his FAQ on "taco snotting" which can be found as a -1 rated comment on most slashdot stories. Please, if CmdrTaco offers you his "special taco", RUN LIKE HELL!!!!!!!!
...just wait for the first Force Feedback models
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
Of course, playing the game seems to leave a lot of people looking and acting like this: guy, so most people are hesitant to try it out.
But who will own the brain patterns that you omitt and the game gathers, the gaming company?
...where the action is confined to leaning slightly left or slightly right.
damn...looks like I'll have to throw out that tinfoil hat.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
I can't wait for the force-feedback version.
My sigs always suck.
I've seen Star Trek Next Generation- I know what happens now... we all have oh so much fun with the game, as it starts to control our minds and we become enslaved.
Luckily Wil Wheaton read Slashdot and hopefully will remember the blinking light sequence that saves us all.
I would be much more impressed if they could tell from my brainwaves wether I am thinking of a car or a dog.
But how important will famine, disease, and war be when 90% of the population has been wiped out by a massive asteroid and the effects after the collision? I'd say this is far more important.
These problems are insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
i think you'll find PostgreSQL is also pretty good value for money!
"It doesn't seem very different from a common laptop... batteries' life is still a big problem."
If you look at the weight of the laptop 2 pounds for the 3 hours and 2.6 pounds of 6 additional hours. That is lighter than a conventional laptop. Hell, my battery prolly weighhs 2 punds for 3 and a half hours. So this does use less power. The battery is just smaller.
I think this is great research, it could give paraplegics (sp?) etc the possibility to walk again with mechanical limbs.
Or am I wrong ??
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Why doesn't Apple get any heat for including iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, QuickTime, Safari, etc?
Because Apple doesn't control 90+ percent of the desktop. Because Apple isn't trying to leverage an OS monopoly into other market segments. Because Apple doesn't have a history of trying to "cut off the oxygen supply" to their competitors through use of monopoly.
Thats not strictly true.. On a speed/watt basis, efficeons are by far the best. It also depends on what ur doing.. The VLIW architecture auto optimises, so some things will run very well on efficeons (and they get faster as they run).. Also, unlike the intel and AMD mobile processors, efficeons aren't just some hacked up processor designed for something else.. The 3 hours of computing on even the centrino's isn't great when u consider that the transmeta's last about 12 hours, and chances are u wont use ur laptop to play doom3 either
He is right though.. the efficeons are fast.. not as fast as the pentium-m's or mobile AMD's, but a very decent speed, gets faster as it runs and awesome battery life make transmeta processors a very good choice..
Could be wrong, but transmeta's I think dont need fans, so they are also very silent.
People should remember that the future of computers is clustered CPU's (like openmosix) and wireless, to share CPU power, so in that point of time u wont need much CPU (cause u will just leech it off other computers on the wireless network if u need it) and when that happens, the only reason why the CPU will matter is for when u aren't connected to a network... still, 1GHZ, or more processing power is definately sufficient (my laptop only has 850 P3, which I'm surviving off easily, even with gentoo). Its no athlon 64 FX, but honestly, if u need that kind of power just buy a workstation...
The reviewer said all data came from the manufacturer's public information & Google. Finding it on Google doesn't validate the data. You need to look at the site that Google sends you too, validate that it is a trustworthy site which has information that you can use.
I think the reason for the music tie-in is that there's more and more competition for the coffee-drinker's dollar and they need to come up with new ways to stand out. Within two blocks of my apartment, there's a Starbucks, a Seattle's best, and two local coffee houses. 10 minute's walk up the street, there a cluster of about 6 more coffee places, including 2 Starbucks at the same intersection.
But between the insane cost and the burnt flavour of their coffee, I never go to Starbucks and the ability to put together a CD isn't going to entice me.
I can see it now...... I am eating ice cream cause my hands are free and i blow the game cause of brain freeze.
Evolution or ID?
You're in Minnesota. That's instant punishment. If it weren't for their hockey team, it would have been labelled 'Hell' a long time ago.
I've been into computers since I was 8. I bought my first car when I was 18. I used to be one of those people that took it somewhere anytime something went wrong. Then when I was 19, I met someone who worked on vehicles for a living. He showed me that I was being taken to the cleaners when I pay Midas $400 for new brakes. When I was 24, I bought my second vehicle. Maybe 6 months later, the front passenger side rotor was shot. I went to Monroe for an estimate, $692 for two new rotors, braks pads, shoes, calipers, pistons, and lines. I talked to my friend, he showed me that my calipers, lines, and the pistons for the rear brakes were fine. So I bought new rotors and pads, did the repair myself for ~$60.
4 years later, I've gone through a fair number of pads and shoes since, but the calipers are still fine and the lines are good.
I've known "computer professionals" who operate on the same kind of principle. They feel like they should make as much money as possible whenever someone comes into the shop by misrepresenting what needs to be done, or even outright lying. Some of them are quite successful because of this, but others fail miserably.
You can't hold those people that you depend upon to make your living in contempt. You can't treat people like their morons. (even if some of them really are)
LK
... but what have you got against embedded punctuation? How the hell is anyone supposed to read your post?
Sean
Sounds like a great reason to start playing Tomb Raider again... ;-)
--Ryan
or "Mawg"...whatever.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Steven Hawking could soon be 'back on his feet' again with this technology.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
You know, I read the headline, and I honestly could not figure out WHO'S sql server was being delayed. So I said to myself while opening it; why diden't the author of this specify which SQL server is being affected?
On a slightly more seious tone (though I did honestly not know who's server was being delayed; I thought it was some no named server that I'd never heard of!), do not allow microsoft to pull another 'we own the word windows'; never shortern Microsoft SQL server, into SQL server- at the absolute least call it MS SQL, so that this way in 5 years they can't turn around and sue everyone who has SQL in there name!
Don't believe me; look at lindows.
NAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!!!
So that's why I couldn't access my inbox full of ads for Penile Enlargement, Hot Sex, and credit cards...
please.
You're connecting "piracy", something inherantly illegal by definition, with peer-to-peer. p2p is a technology that can be used for so many different things, that lumping them together is naive.
so many geeks want what to be legal? piracy? sharing mp3's? p2p? they are 3 separate things, only one of which I care about, as a geek, and that is p2p. Which I don't even use. Once i tried bit torrent to d/l slackware, but it didn't work.
please, for the sake of reality, don't lump 3 vastly different things into one thing that the general public sees as illegal. p2p != sharing mp3s. p2p != piracy. sharing mp3's is not always even equal to piracy.
generalizations are like premature optimizations... the root of all evil.
Wow, is the tinfoil hat brigade going to have a field day with this one!
This is indeed remarkable technology. I can see many great uses for this. Using the method quoted above could be used to create a kind of a communication or control device for disabled people.
However, the serious threat lies in the sheer ability of computer games to make people addicted to them. I once saw a television program about full-time gamers, who spend almost 16 hours a day gaming. They sleep on bunkbeds in the same building as where they play games. Even now, some 3D games are so realistic, that it is only the control devices that give the game away (no pun intended).
However, once even that reality is broken, people might start confusing real world with the virtual game world. The next logical step would be to do away with displays and attach the output units directly to nerve endings. Then you can have a person who's completely hooked to the game world. This reminds me of a film I once watched...
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Nothing to see here
brain and brain. what is brain?
I, for one, welcome our tightrope walking monster overlords.
Virtual Valerie will never be the same.
How far do you think that the internet will be responsible for creating a de-facto international legal system? Property rights, shared criminal databases, shared economic systems,... it seems that the influence of TCP/IP packets has no limits on our society. Will we one day see a world government to enforce international law? And lastly, will this be the US?
I would like to see visual feedback (along with audio) of my brain activity. From there, the software could help me train me to be either more left or right brain in activity though mental exercises that alow me to be more "in tune" with my own mind.
I know is sounds a bit odd. But having real-time feedback of your mind at work could be helpfull rather then using drugs as an alternative.
Note: Sometimes drugs are necessary. But it's of my opinion that they get prescribed for the wrong reasons at times.
Life is not for the lazy.
I have a game "system" in my closet called the Mind Drive where you could control games with your mind. It was a Nolan Bushnell company from 7-8 years ago. This is hardly new.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Wow... the pr0n industry would just *love* this.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
but isn't any games, or infact any action essential brain-controlled (exception made for political). Sure there might be additional items included in the path, like arms, hands, fingers.
This is cool, but [needsex] not news. I [william shatner's birthday today - how many more?] saw a [excellent cleavage] report on this several years ago. When [is lunch?] do they expect [what kind of underwear is she wearing?] to have a working prototype for [I need a hug] a really cool game [is there coffee?] like Doom3? [needsex]
When I graduated back in '96 one of the MsC's I saw advertised involved research into this.
:-/
;-)
It looked pretty interesting, except that I had spent my second year drunk and only got third class honours (I think they wanted a minimum of 2:1)
Basically the research involved signal processing to pick a flicker frequency out of all the noise in the visual cortex. I guess that from an interface pov you would want a "confirm" button to make sure you don't select stuff by accident, but that is just a guess.
At the time they thought they could pick up the light people were concentrating on, rather than nececarrily needing them to move their eyes*. Don't know if that is still the case.
The implication was that they wanted to create a hands free interface for wheelchairs, or weapons, depending on who seemed more likely to part with cash
Dave
*Try concentrating on an icon without moving your eyes. Um.
Having never owned one of those biofeedback devices, I can't say if they ever worked, but I saw lots of ads for them in the mid-late 1970s in magazines like Omni and Popular Mechanics.
I simply interfaced to my VCS.
It's about damn time. This carpal tunnel syndrome is really affecting my WarCraft III games.
-Colin
While at a CompUSA or some other national computer store about 4 years ago(at least), while my sister was looking at computers I wandered into the game section. there was a demo of a skiing game. you put your finger in a little device like a pulse reader. it was rigidly attached, so it wouldn't move left or right. though you controlled the character in the game, through "willing" it somehow. Maybe the interface was pressure sensitive a bit, or maybe it reacted to small changes in your pulse, like "uh oh, i'm about to fall off the cliff (increase pulse)" and the character moved away from the cliff.
It was pretty interesting for about 5 minutes though. I forgot about it until now.
There's already a game out there that does this.
the journey to wild divine
It uses biofeedback to control the game, which is a little different than the technique used in this game.
Ok - it's not so far yet as too "read" minds - just some brainwave analysis. But once that analysis gets more advanced you can bet i wanna know even more than today what the programm does with my data (yep - that data would be me than).
and yet, we still have mother fuckers walking around blind, deaf, mute, retarded, all kinds of 'incurable' diseases, homeless, starving, etc, etc, etc., and yet we dump an assload of money into crap like this for video games. I'm with that fat bastard from Total Recall: 'Don't fuck with your brain, pal. It ain't worth it.'
Spread the RC luvin'
OMG DeMo plz K ThX BI
These game developers should buddy up with those guy who make the exoskeleton legs (Previous Slashdot article). Could you imagine the possiblities?
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Parent is trolling about grandparent. It's a shame when idiots choose to disrupt Slashdot
A friend of mine thought he was gonna get rich when he was the manufacturer's rep for a product called The Mind Drive. You could use your thoughts to "think right or left" and these thoughts would register in your finget and be transmitted to the screen as you slalom down a ski slope. It was actually pretty cool Here is a CNET article from 1995. The Mind Drive
Learn About Outsourcing. http://www.pioutsource.com
And after hundreds of years, someone will come along and offer humans the RED pill, to leave the Matrix...
Just goes to show, people are never happy.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
you could just link to my comment, instead of cutting and pasting it...
Thanks for the props tho.
I played a game like this at Disney World about 10 years ago.
It was a skiing slalom game and you had to make the skier move left and right by thinking about it. I guess the only difference is that this game didn't use a helmet. Instead you had to place your hand on a sensor.
-However, the serious threat lies in the sheer -ability of computer games to make people addicted -to them. I once saw a television program about -full-time gamers, who spend almost 16 hours a day -gaming. They sleep on bunkbeds in the same -building as where they play games. Even now, some -3D games are so realistic, that it is only the -control devices that give the game away (no pun -intended). Umm... you mean...like... university dorm halls? ;-)
Would be interesting to see what would happen if someone with severe dyslexia tried the game
I make my face look like this and concerned words come out.
Back to the future Part 2
Marty McFly tries to impress the kids in the year 2015 by playing the videogame from 1985:
"You mean you have to use your HANDS? That's like a BABY'S GAME!"
The article meant to say that Brian was controlling a video game - and so was his wife!
A way for gamers to avoid even the little bit of exercise that twitching your fingers provides...
I found them!
With my >>mind
Cool, when that comes out I'll be able to refine my training for that tic tac toe game on the Cartoon Network where you have to use your mind to place the O's.
Its been slow going so far.
The only tough part in making this technology work is getting high resolution brain states. If one of us would be willing to get, say, 1000 electrodes implanted in our domes we would all be able to play much more sophisticated games with only our brains. Of course, the holy grail will be to be able to do this without thousands of unsightly wires sticking from our heads, but this is a long way off. Consider the similar (but easier) problem of tracking the state of a computer based solely on it's EM emissions, compounded by the fact that every computer will have its different components in slightly different places and orientations.
The meek shall inherit the earth, in 3 by 6 plots. - Lazerus Long
I'm an AOL user, you insensitive clod!
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
They do to. Where have you been? They've sued to stop people from making their own macs instead of buying them, wont support other file formats on their mp3 player, etc etc
You mean you have to use your HANDS? That's like a baby's toy!
The original article states that this game has been developed AS PART of research into the technology. There are no plans to make it available for sale. Quoting the article: "The game is not for sale, but it is a way for the researchers to learn how to develop the technology."
The article is from CBBC (Children's BBC), which naturally will be quite dumbed-down and lacking in information.
For more information, pictures and tech specs from one of the developers, check out Robert Burke's web page.
I recently went to a thesis defense studying some brainwave computer interface. There seems to be a lot of interesting study going on here. This particular thesis was studying a particular type of interface that focuses on what one of the commitee members called the "ah ha!" reaction. The implemented system used a scull cap with probes like an EEG on it that targeted a particular set of waves. The user would watch a screen interface and icons representing choices would flash randomly. Whenever the icon the user wanted flashed, they were instructed to count that as a flash in their head. After enough samples were taken, that selection was made. The experiment they did involved a user having a rebotic arm make a cup of coffee. This study measured the change in brainwave at a particular period of time. Also mentioned were other studies where immediate measurement of a 'focused'/'relaxed' change in another set of brainwaves to control a cursor on the screen. Both types were also non-invasive using EEG type technolgoy. Also mentioned were current experiments in invasive brain/computer interaction where direct measurement of neurons in monkeys allowed them to control a robotic arm of some sort.
The research has some serious uses too.
It's kind of interesting though that the first priority of use for this technology would be video games.
I guess one could claim that it is because it is still in research but the obvious priority must hopefully be to help paralysed people.
There is an adventure game called The Journey to Wild Divine.
Instead of reading brain waves, it reads heart rate fluctuations and skin conductance level (sweat), both of which you learn to control over the course of the game.
Technoli
If you want to try and see if slashdot has any noticeable impact on the bbc's traffic, take a look at their MRTG graphs here: http://support.bbc.co.uk/support/mrtg/internet/
I'm curious as to whether the human brain has a limit as to number of outputs. We know that with a feedback device so that a person can see what they're doing, it's possible to teach someone to be able to control characteristics of their brain waves. This could, presumably, be used as an output to control some device. What happens if we just take this higher resolution, add more types of devices Babies don't grow up knowing how to operate their hands and feet -- they have to see them moving and form links to understand what output signals correspond to "leg moved". Why couldn't we do the same with the brain? We wait for particular parts of the brain to be activated at a particular level, and treat that as a signal. I've no idea what kind of bandwidth we're talking about, but if you consider the complexity of talking and that we can deal with going from zero knowledge about talking to learning how to talk properly, that we could manage the same with a brain output device.
It would be nice to be able to type into my computer, to be able to interface in a more efficient manner than putting myself in a particular position, putting my fleshy extensions on a bunch of blocks on a keyboard, and then having the keyboard record how they wiggle and tell the computer.
OTOH, a brain-controlled computer would deprive my fingers of their precious exercise.
Oh, yes...a hands-free headset with goggles, one controlled by the brain, would be terribly cool.
May we never see th
This really isn't all that new. IBVA has been working with this for a while, and also does many other things. There are kits to use brainwave patterns to fastforward or rewind your VCR/DVD Player/CD Player, create midi compositions from your brainwaves while you sleep, and a game control system for consoles. You can also record brainwave patterns while you jog or do whatever else and aren't within range of the receiver.
Oh, and they also claim to have some Linux stuff in the pipe as well. Though, admittedly, I don't know how long it's been "coming soon"
It has to be said (anonymously):
In Soviet Russia, video game controls brain!
I mean it is awfully close to April 1st.
They don't mention who the researchers are, that's a bit odd. Most university reasearchers/companies like to get some recognition in any news release.
And besides, all I see in the article is some CG animation which was probably cobbled together in Photoshop (where are the flashing boxes?) and a not very detailed photo of the headset contraption.
I'd certainly consider this interesting material for a tech demo, but can it function within a real game?
A game presumably has to be fun, and its controls conducive to that, and while the controls for a game including this functionality might be a remarkable technical feat, they could also be absolutely infuriating. We'll have to see.
... for all of us can't even think staight :)
So what happens when these kinds of things become commonplace? The human brain is a highly complex thing, its self-organising properties allow it to adapt, improve and learn new things.
...
What will happen if/when these things become commonplace and people are "Used" to controling everyday things with the mind? Could this change the human psyche or affect our communication in some way? Who knows what hitherto unknown behaviours will emerge from training the parts of the brain that might be used in technology like this?
nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
AC's posting stupid anti-american (as in US) sterotypical BS lack the basic requirements as well.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
we finally return to a time where you have to use your brain to play a computer game...
in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
Something similar to this on tomorrows world (science programme for Non UK /.ers) about 5 years ago, in that "game" you had to get a square that was moving around the screen to stay inside another square. It wasn't for entertainment but for people who epileptic fits. The theory was if they can learn to control the square it would help them learn to control the effect and severity of there fit's
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
How on earth was the above troll modded up to "4: Funny" ? There are no brains in America? Americans are all stupid? Whatever, buddy.
Btw props to Israel for taking out the head of Hamas. Other than the US, Israel is the only country with the balls to actually do anything about terrorism other than appease. (i.e. Spain)
Ok... how long before this is embraced and extended by the makers of find interactive pr0n?
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
why did they draw a beard and eyebrows on the styrofoam head?
it's just a styrofoam head... after all...
if they wanted to make it look better on the photo, why didnt they just put a real person under the headset?
I bet this device could be made to work with Doom. Unlike Quake's +mlook mode, Doom only has a few controls to worry about, and despite that it's a fucking kickass game. One of the all-time best, in fact -- and the sales, and the amount of user-created levels/expansions, and the number of people who still play it *to this day* (10 years later) reflects that.
So I don't think this technology is nearly as useless as some might think.
I couldn't agree more. This is a revolutionary step while at the same time, it is a pretty lame game. If games of this type advance the same way we have gone from a square dot bouncing back and forth the result in about 10 years or so will blow us away. this signature is protected under GPL
You're not still using keyb/mouse combo are you? Get out of the past
What next, Slashdot comes to you from the letters 'S' and 'L'?
--
This sig is inoffensive.
Well... I fell for it... the oldest trick in the book.
/emoting lovey-dovey stuff, and I reciprocated. Got to the point that I was even posting fan-fiction of our adventures on our LS message board. One day, one of her friends took over her character for a bit while she had do to something. Not knowing, I sent a tell to her character. The response read: "sorry, (so-and-so) isn't here right now, I'm playing for him". ...
Been playing this game since release, made a lot of friends. Eventually met this one girl who I really got along with. Eventually, we became levelling partners. It got to the point where we would coordinate each other`s schedules so we could level together. Eventually she started
So, anyways, I'm feeling like a total 'tard. I fell for it, hook line and sinker.
I confronted "her" and "she" spilled the beans, confessing the truth to me and the entire LS. Needless to say, we don't talk much anymore. He was super-apologetic and wanted to know if he could make up for it, but I just can't shake the sick feeling in my stomach. Nor can I bring myself to forgive him. Am I over-reacting? Or was I just stupid for falling for it in the first place? I've lost a levelling partner, and that sucks, but I feel like I've been messed with, and I just can't stand that.
So, post away, call me a n00b, whatever, just felt I needed to share this.
-Ben
www.macslash.org
After playing a few of these mind games that rely on 'concentrate harder to move forward, move backward if you lose concentration' interfaces is that I can't help but think how easy it would be to fix the games.
Think about it, if the movement of the on screen character was following a fixed path that had nothing to do with your brain waves, you would be lulled into a false sense of confidence early on, believing that your brain waves moved the character. Then, as the fixed path brought it back, you would instantly question whether or not you had lost concentration, which in itself would be losing concentration!
hmmmmm
Interactive Institute of Sweden developed something similar in 1999: a game called Brainball in which you won by relaxing rather than concentrating.
..theoretically before the experience of playing a game or even watching a movie is completely "neural" without extermal stimuli. If you've taken any psychology class you might have studied the research involving converting analogue sound to digital sound then to chemical neural impulses for the brain. The same thing goes for vision. Originally the patient had to carry around a cart that had housed the eleoctronic device that did this. Now it's a small belt sort of device, essentially smaller and more accurate. Imagine sometime in the future (and who knows when) that we have perfected the conversion of sound we hear to action potentials in the brain. We could even have devices that pick up signals unrecognizable by the human ear (radio waves) and convert them into action potentials. Think of this for somatosensory mechanisms in the brain, vision, smell, everything. If you've read the science fiction series Otherland you may understand what I am talking about. I also think it opens a lot of doors in discovering what really creates the "conscious" experience of sense. That is, how action potentials in our brain create the reality of the outside world that see, feel, hear, etc.
Ok, not quite the same, but years ago my brother and I bought a TV (Zenith?) with built in Pong video game but no controlers. Rather than buy some or buy some variable resisters, we just poked wires into the ports, held one wire in each hand, and played. No kidding! The system is so sensitive to changes in resistance that micro motions would move the paddle. We actually got pretty good at controlling the game. So there we'd be, as still as possible, holding wires, playing Pong. Good thing the TV broke after a week or our eyes would have permanently dried out.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I saw the same thing FOR SALE at a Computer city nearly 10 years ago. It was a bio-feedback monitor that let you control the direction of a downhill skier. There were a couple other simplistic games too, but the control method was the same, and it seemed a little unpredictable.
The OpenEEG people aim to create an affordable EEG kit. There's already some schematics for home tinkerers.
Now I feel bad because I didn't pay attention to learning electronics when I was younger...
I do not moderate.
OTOH, a brain-controlled computer would deprive my fingers of their precious exercise.
I doubt it :-)
Sorry, couldn't resist. No offence intended, just a laugh.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
It would be nice to be able to type into my computer, to be able to interface in a more efficient manner than putting myself in a particular position, putting my fleshy extensions on a bunch of blocks on a keyboard, and then having the keyboard record how they wiggle and tell the computer.
Now theres an extremely good idea, and by god Im sure its possible with a similar technology. Consider what happens when you type stuff into the computer? Well, you basically thinking of a word and your hands automatically convert that word into keypresses (at least for someone who does a lot of typing eg, a geeky programmer or slashdot addict!).
To implement a system like this would probably be pretty simple. Although a nueral net / brainwave guru might need to fill in the gaps here. All you would really need to is wear that head attachment / brain wave detector thing, say for a couple of hours at the computer while typing into a word processor or slashdot. It wouldnt take long for a neural network (with a feedback loop to the computer keyboard and the brainwave detector) to learn what brainwaves mean what keys were pressed. Once a sufficient level of stability has occured one could just remove the keyboard and operate on mind alone, just by looking at the word processor and "seeing" the text on screen!
Far fetched and fanciful maybe, but is something like this possible?
nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Actually, you must think... *in Irish*
I remember reading in a computing mag from 1984 that some UK research group was doing this. They developed a Defender-like game in which you couldn't shoot, only move the ship along the y-axis of the screen.
For the controls, they used some kind of bio-feedback in which the player put two fingers in sensors and the device would measure the difference in electrical conductivity and then translate it into movement instructions. The whole effort was justified on the basis of accessibility research and the game ran, IIRC, on a BBC Micro or an Atari 800.
-- Look to the Rose that blows about us--"Lo, Laughing," she says, "into the World I blow..."
Way back like 20+ years ago. I was part of a regular market test group for video games, and one day they brought us in to test this thing that wrapped around your head and would "read" simple left/right thoughts. I never knew how it worked, if it was really reading brainwaves or muscles, or what, but it worked.
I played River Raid with it, on the 2600. That's how old it was.
Back in the mid-1990's, I was the subject of a research experiment that sounds a lot like this. It was being conducted by Brigham Young University. They were testing to see if certain kinds of music could enhance concentration. Using electrodes that were hooked up to my head, I'd look at a monitor and, depending on the frequency of my brainwaves, a puzzle would solve itself more or less rapidly (or some other similar premise).
Bike games.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Thanks! I will no longer be pantless! My co-workers thank you!
Check this out in the Atari Museum...
http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/
These people can in fact move their eyes. That is how current systems work, by tracking the movement off the eyes they can manipulate a pointer over a keyboard.
Also this is just one way of doing it. I seen earlier experiments that worked simply by making the user think of two widely different things. Using that as calibration and then controlling something by thinking of those two things.
So in fact what you suggest was what they used in one experiment and it worked, tv presentator was capable of doing it with only a few minutes of training.
Flashing lights is just easier to make a working model I guess but in practice this could work for anyone with a working brain and who is capable of receiving input sufficient to learn about this.
Pretty amazing stuff really.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Right before everything fell apart at Atari (in 1984) there was this headband controller. The designer thought he was a genius. Atari was losing millions of bucks a day, but he was wandering the halls with this thing strapped to his head, certain that he was going to make millions on royalties.
You wrapped the band around your noggin and a couple of electrodes picked up changes in resistance caused by tensing your muscles. So you could furrow your brow (and move a paddle to the left...) or unfurrow (and move the paddle to the right...) and thus play pong, hands-free. (After five or ten minutes, users generally had a headache). Of course, the sweat of exertion changed the skin resistance as you played, and you had to recalibrate the thing every couple of minutes.
You can clean joysticks. But a sweaty headband, just used by someone else? Ick!
Seriously: A controller with fewer than "a few nines" of reliability isn't much of a controller, unless you're handicapped or something and can do nothing else.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is insufficiently documented.
The practical limitation with this kind of thing is that electrical activity recorded at the scalp is noisy and diffuse. If you could implant an electrode, or a chip with wireless transmitter then you can use the actual neural signals themselves to control something external. This has been done in monkeys.
But at this point I bet most people are not going to want one of these implanted in their parietal lobe just to play a video game.
On the other hand, you can do a lot better with EEG than these guys have done. It's not all that impressive, considering moderate success with this thing has been acheived with neurofeedback without having people look at a visual stimulus. For example, you can train people to move a cursor around a screen by controlling the relative amount of alpha activity over each hemisphere (or something like that, I can't remember the details.) It seems to me like these guys are just eliciting visual cortex activity at a particular frequency with these checkerboards and then reading it off with their electrodes.
Upcoming talk and demonstration on the development of Brain-Computer Interfaces: http://www.notacon.org/speakers.html#lowne (shameless plug)
Invasive, motor-cortical BCI development at Utah: http://www.bioen.utah.edu/cni/Projects/Motor.htm
Mike Gibbs' work with BCIs at Oxford University's Robotics Group: http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~mgibbs/research.html
The Neural Prostheses program at the National Institutes of Health includes calls for proposals in BCI development: http://www.ninds.nih.gov/npp/
The University of British Columbia's BCI research group: http://www.ece.ubc.ca/~garyb/BCI.htm
Results of the 2003 Brain Computer interface competition (focuses on signal processing techniques): http://ida.first.fraunhofer.de/projects/bci/compe
BCI development at the Cognitive Science and Technology group at the Helsinki University of Technology: http://www.lce.hut.fi/research/bci/
Dr. Jessica Bayliss's BCI work and extensive bibliography (very important, seminal work on BCI development): http://www.cs.rit.edu/~jdb/research/ and http://www.cs.rit.edu/~jdb/research/baylissThesis
Dr. Charles Anderson's work at Colorado State University with EEG pattern classification in BCI systems: http://www.cs.colostate.edu/eeg/index.html
Manchester University's Toby Howard has written some good articles on BCIs, mostly for Popular Science: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/aig/staff/toby/research/b
Dr. Michael Black at Brown University teaches a course in BCI development: http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs295-7/home.html
Cyberkinetics, Inc. makes medical-use BCIs: http://www.cyberkineticsinc.com/
And has some kind of linux support.
No, I've no idea why we don't all have one either...
Peter
Teheh. ;-)
IANAN (I am not a neurologist) but from what I know of the brain, it is a very adaptable organ and does the same thing in a number of different ways. These kinds of devices are not that much different from TV when you think about it. The only difference being you have a chance to interact and use your brainpower to move a virtual appendage, you can make a choice and you can act, unlike TV where it is pre-programmed. This will be like Pong for the brave new world we are all about to enter.
The downside of all of this...siezures. I've seen Johhny Mnemonic, I know what happens when people get too much digital stimulation.
If you have ADD or ADHD or just can't pay attention long enough, video games that feedback your brain waves have a value.
http://www.canoe.ca/Health9912/22_adhd.html
Wavepoint, here in Edmonton, AB Canada has gone beyond research and clinically uses the technology to help people with ADD, (Attention Deficit Disorder).
I was going to try it, but when I saw the $8000 price to play their video game, my ADD kicked in and I lost interest.
MindDrive had a product that did the exact same thing about 10 years ago as this and you can get it on ebay for $15 now. It works, but it's very stupid and pointless.
Scratch
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
I have Carpal Brain syndrome.
Oh, yes...a hands-free headset with goggles, one controlled by the brain, would be terribly cool. No it wouldn't be cool at all! It would be way cooler to project images directly into the brain's visual center. Who needs eyes anyway? This is excellent stuff; maybe it means that I will someday finally be able to say: "To humans it is like staring at the sun; a blinding brightness that conceals a source of great power". Uh, while meaning it, of course. I've said it plenty of times before, with no effect ...
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
The PBS show "Scientific American Frontiers" did an episode in 2001 showing examples of this.
You can see info about the segment here.
They showed a man who was unable to use his hands, who was outfitted with brain-wave controlled electrical stimulation of his muscles. He was able to open and close his hand by thinking about it.
SlagheapFirst against the wall when the revolution comes
Dunno about you guys, but I play games so I don't have to think, its an escape. Playing FPS games are almost like reflex action... Not sure if thought powered games will ever get to that point.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
through these interesting appendages called 'hands' and 'feet'. These are actually directly wired to centers in my brain, and they can be used directly to control games, etc.
Seriously folks, with all due respect, why are we spending lots of money to develop what amounts to an inherently low bandwidth control? Trying to control something by modifying brain waves, to make it go 'left' or 'right', will never compete with a directly wired hand, the nerves of which will always have a much higher bandwidth and will always provide faster response with a greater range of control.
This is like trying to fall back on a 300 baud modem in the age of fiber!
this was predicted in 1917:
Man will, in time, manage to implant the death-forces in man,
related to electrical and magnetic forces, with external machines.
He will then be able to direct his intentions, his thoughts into the machine.
(Rudolf Steiner, Individuelle Geistwesen und einheitlicher
Weltengrund, November 25, 1917, Dornach Switzerland)
Israel rocks my socks now. Why do people feel bad about killing a terrorist leader bound to a wheelchair? I wish ALL terrorists were bound to wheelchairs. Then it would be so fucking easy to kill them before they kill us. Hopefully, they are not motorized, or else they might strap explosives to themselves and drive into a building at 5 MPH and totally fucking kill everyone!
Also, Spain is a pussy. Now, anything that a terrorist group wants, they will go to Spain for it. I hope you like getting assraped, Spain! Really, they're almost worse than the French! Which makes you think: why don't terrorists go after France? It's not like they would try to stop you. Maybe the terrorists just like a good fight. It's not like France has anything decent to offer anyway.
= 9J =
... getting those hot animated characters naked?
Let's file this in the "already been done" category. That would be under Atari MindLink System controller, circa 1984.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
It would be way cooler to project images directly into the brain's visual center. Who needs eyes anyway?
You mean kinda like the devices in "Strange Days" where you can tape your brain while you're having sex and then go back later and "do it" again? Sign me up!
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
In the early 90's (probably 90/91) I saw an episode of "Beyond 2000". It was about controlling a computer program with your mind. It was a full CG 3D environment with a CG person that you could have walk forward/left/right/back/etc. Just by your thoughts.
I have often thought about this episode through the years. When Doom came out I thought how cool it would be to play the game with your mind. Same when Duke3D, Quake, Unreal etc.
I wonder why, 10-15 years later there really hasn't been much advancement in this. With as far as everything else has come since 1990 this should be common place technology.
In 1998 I had a conversation with my dad about were I though computers would be going. They had already shown a computer w/Internet access the size a pee (some college experiment). I had seen the wearable glasses that projects the picture onto your retina and where, I felt, "thought recognition" should be the answer was obvious and awesome.
A computer you could keep in a shirt pocket or wear on your wrist (or maybe be implanted under skin if small enough) controlled by thought, and using the PC glasses.
If it also had Internet access, send an email or instant message by though. That would nearly be telepathy.
Anyway I saw the potential that was right there and have been surprised that it hasn't materialized yet.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
In a short time, I will no longer have to move my right thumb to change the channel on the television! Thumb cramps suck!
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
This isn't really especially new technology. They've been using since the early 1990's, particularly for individuals with ADHD. More information here http://www.biofeedback.net/
The Blade Itself
Brain powered exoskeleton legs...
:)
I can think of nothing more pertinent to "balance" than the act of walking.
Or does that headset look like the one that Doc sticks on Marty in Back to the Future? I just hope it'll work better...
"You want me to... make a contribution to the coast guard!"
Here's a much cheaper solution.
1) Rent a copy of your favorite game.
2) Invite your most passive friend over for the day.
3) Set him up in front of the console.
4) Now spent the whole afternoon telling him how to play, what he's doing wrong, and generally hurling abuse at him. "Left you fuck! Turn left! Oh look, now you're DEAD!"
Eventually you'll either have complete control over his actions or he'll crack and shove the controller up your ass.
Just pray it's not the original XBox controller.
brainwaves are belong to us.
Dustin - A different story...
But how does it compare to the crappy biofeedback controls in MindSkier?
Da Blog
So how long until the author of this book complains to the Mozilla foundation for trademark violation?
Let's see...
Firefox the book: 1990
Firefox the browser: 2004
Looks like it's time for another regularly scheduled name change!
The hand is operated completely through spinal nerves. If you tap into the nerve itself going to the hand, you can bypass the hand. This gives greater bandwidth because the axons are concentrated in one place. But everything starts in the brain, so that's the place to look.
-I am an elective eunuch.
My grandpa paid 50 dollars per session for me to have electrodes hooked up to my head and control a ship with my mind. It was designed to help people with ADD focus better. The more brain activity it sensed, the higher the thing on the screen went.
After a few sessions I was able to control the little thing on the screen, but I think it was pointless. As a game it may be more useful than a tool to solve ADD.
I have had a dual-channel IBVA system for upwards of 7 years... It may be the single most awe-inspiring party gag in existence.
whether you are making midi music with your brain or controlling quicktime movies, people never cease to be amazed by the thing...
I think that a lot of the fun/challenge in most video games comes from the difficult process of developing the successful hand/eye coordination necessary to control your on-screen character. You work at it to overcome your limitations, and the payoff is when you beat the level boss, or whatever.
But if you take away this physical aspect of playing a game, you lose that challenge, and that gratification.
Imagine: your on-screen character instantly responds to your brain waves, and you never have to worry about which button to push, or getting the timing wrong.
Once the novelty of controlling the game by your brain waves wore off, wouldn't it be pretty boring?
I assume that a game like this is possible, but how do you know that this device actually works? Couldn't it just pretend that it is working? How do you know?
You can play "Brain Pong", where the pads get controlled by your brain.
A revolutionary aspect is that you don't need to condition your state of mental conciousness to adopt to the interface (meditation, etc.) as many of the "old" systems mentioned here, but the computer algorithms actually adopt to YOU by intelligently analyzing your brainwaves.
You get 'recorded' when you imagine the pad going up and down and the algorithms do the rest.
He will then be able to direct his intentions, his thoughts into the machine.
Umm... I already can. Infact, I am doing so right now... Sure it's thought->fingers->keyboard->machine, but it's still my thoughts being directed into the machine...
@ Soon i'll be able to strap into a veritech and waste some zentradi. @ i can't wait for psionics to be used in more tech. Ages ago i dreampt of video games that respond to emotion.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Basically all they're doing is van Eck phreaking on 100 billion neurons in the human brain, then reverse engineering the storage and retrieval system, and trying to distill all that data (noise) down to a yes/no (right/left) command (signal).
Shades of early voice recognition where the first thing you had to train it for was to start/stop the voice processing. I was sitting cross-legged in the dark in a new empty apartment with a new computer saying, in increasingly firm tones because the red light / green light refused to indicate that it registered:
10
listen to me.
stop listening.
listen to me.
stop listening.
Listen To Me.
Stop Listening.
LISTEN TO ME!
STOP LISTENING!
goto 10
I have to laugh. Who is training who?
LOL!
Thats what I was thinking when I looked at the Pac Man type game.
If I'm going to pay that much for a video game, it better have a naked Lara Croft or something.
I thought, why not just bank my money and wait until they come out with a consumer version of the head gear I can hookup to any box.
They would *not* guarantee any results.
A sure bet that gives them a license to steal my money.
no Thanks.
Well is he?
There are a lot of working prototypes that allow you to control at least two analog signals and play STUPID GAMES (instead of doing something useful). Also there is a program called Dasher which is very useful to enter text. Now why there is still no mix of these two technologies? My RSI hurts and I tried a lot of alternatives, but nothing involving voice or feet works, at least nothing is enough to perform my usual sysadmin duties :(
Wasn't anyone else impressed with the _real_ breakthrough: Styrofoam that generates brain waves!!! Think of all the effort those guys must have gone through to create that styrofoam head just to _begin_ developing that kind of video game controller!