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Brain Control Headset for Gamers
gbjbaanb writes "Gamers will soon be able to interact with the virtual world using their thoughts and emotions alone.
Headsets which read neural activity are not new, but Ms Le [president of US/Australian firm Emotiv] said the Epoc was the first consumer device that can be used for gaming. 'This is the first headset that doesn't require a large net of electrodes, or a technician to calibrate or operate it and does require gel on the scalp,' she said. 'It also doesn't cost tens of thousands of dollars.'" Wait until the government can get warrantless wiretaps on the logs of those things.
I can't wait to see what some hardware hackers can do with this and a Lego Mindstorms NXT robot!
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I'm personally glad to read this, as Gamera has been far too much of a free spirit wrecking havoc with his fire breath. This new era of brain control for Gamera should focus his energies far better to protect the cities of Japan.
-a.e.mossberg
Another new word of the 21st century:
brain sprain
Usage: "I sprained my brain playing HalfLife all through the weekend".
sigs are hazardous to your health
When I first read that headline, I read it as a headset that enables one to control the mind, vs. using the mind to control something. Perhaps that's because I'm listening to the 7th Son trilogy over at podiobooks.com...
Probably could help them quiet a bit with things.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
I remember seeing these demonstrated at my college a few months back. At the time we could use them to point, and type things; but they were very slow and somewhat inaccurate.
At the time they did not have a "Backspace" method, so when you typed "O" instead of "P" you would still have to use the keyboard to delete it.
Found a YouTube video of it, but I think this one from a different company.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhR076duc8M
Look closer at the text. It looks like the device reads *facial expressions* through pointed sensors touching the skin. Yay. That sounds comfortable.
Did it say it required gel or did not. I have had multiple EEG's and the gel is not fun. It is like gel with sand in it. "This is the first headset that doesn't require a large net of electrodes, or a technician to calibrate or operate it and does require gel on the scalp," she said. "It also doesn't cost tens of thousands of dollars."
Linux is like a teepee. It has no windows, no gates, and there's an Apache inside.
Now when you die alone in your studio apartment the decomposing of your brain will be interpreted as commands, further delaying the chance that someone will alert the police that something is wrong.
This is definately a technology i'm interested in, it will be awesome for game controlling and possibly helpful for the disabled. However, I think there are some concerns which need to addressed in its application.
For example, the Half-Life 2 games send an enormous ammount of information to Valve regarding player performance and interaction.
Do you really want your emotional reactions broadcast over the internet? Aren't these pitfalls and questions inevitable with this technology?
I've been seeing these claims for years, but this technology is not really based on thought. It's just one form of bio-feedback. It is an example of control without conventional physical contact, but it does not process structured thought. The user typically has to train themselves to control the feedback mechanism. This is NOT reeading thoughts and taking some action. It is using thoughts to modulate some physical process. In that sense, it's not much different than training your fingers to operate a game controller.
Gamera, Gamera!
Gamera is really neat!
He is filled with turtle meat!
We all love you Gamera!
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Soon all effort will be removed from gaming what-so-ever. Think of all the precious calories we can save playing World of Warcraft with our minds! Wonder if the twitch reaction timing will mean I can finally beat a Warlock 1v1.
From the article: "It picks up electrical activity from the brain and sends wireless signals to a computer," said Tan Le, president of US/Australian firm Emotiv."
:)
So instead of trying to pick up cordless phone signals and listening to conversations, they can instead sniff into the wireless signal and pick up thoughts!
I just can't wait to see the blog articles from this!
it says in the article "does require gel" but it's listed with things it no longer requires im wondering if that was a typo or not. Im interested to see how this works out. I wonder if someone would be able to hack either the device itself or whatever console they're gaming on and read their thoughts?
A real picture can be found here: http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/02/project-epoc-thought-powered-controller-could-gaming-get-any-la/
"Wait until the government can get warrantless wiretaps on the logs of those things."
Must every paragraph be twisted and poked until it makes some political comment. I don't know about the rest of you but I find it very annoying. Politics is only a small section that effect peoples lives. Things do happen without a political motive or really needs a political comantary. I think we as a people are getting obsessive over politics, everything needs a deep meaning. It doesn't enjoy life a bit.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Will I just be able to think "boom headshot" and become 'l33t' at CS?
Did anyone else mis-read that headline as "Birth Control for gamers" or is it just me?
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
The government doesn't need "to get" warrantless wiretaps. They need to GET a warrant. That's the whole point of warrantless surveillance. You don't need to GET anything. You just do it without any oversight. No one watches the watchers. If the think you should be monitored for any reason whatsoever they will do so. Our political leaders have let us down, and that's putting it mildly.
If you think thinking in Russian will keep the Government from spying on your thoughts, you are wrong. The US government has plenty of people who know Russian left over from the Cold War. Based on the current state of US intelligence, I think you are better off thinking in Farsi.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
You're trying to say you've been going all this time without one? I think I'd have gotten bored pretty quick of all this internet stuff without it. No workstation is complete without a cockpit simulator!
which is totally what she said
For this to work, you must be a gamer *and* you must have a brain.
OK.
Ed
Without your space helmet, Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult.
Presented In BC [Brain Control] (Where Available)
I misread the summary title as Birth Control Headset for gamers and thought "Man, am I playing the wrong games"
for sharing.
With this, hopefully no one would slip and throw their controller into the TV. It would be a tad bit uncomfortable with it being strapped to their head.
I'm a bit surprised they don't offer the option of a head-mounted display. They've already got the head-tracking, but that kinda sucks if your display doesn't move with you.
With all this VR stuff, I hate to rain on the parade, but as we get closer and closer to reality, what exactly is the advantage? At what point do people go outside and say, hey, this actual reality thing has better resolution! I understand that you can change or eliminate the rules in VR. But, if the rules are invented by people (you know, those things that go to war incessantly), then the rules are probably going to be worse and MORE annoying. So, I think I will stick with actual reality. Just a thought.
No one brought up the inevitable hack to enable "no-hands" surfing for pr0n.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I saw one at CompUSA back in '98-99 and played with the skiing game. It was able to steer correctly about 75% of the time; not bad since I just walked up and plopped my finger on the little sensor.
Go to http:\\other90.com for an unobtrusive "neural" interface. It's really a biometric sensor that's able to get some very crude up/down/left/right input. Of course, their website is straight out of 1998 and it doesn't look like they have made any significant effort to rewrite their software for 2k, let alone XP.
Given that it never seemed to make any inroads at any time, I sometimes wonder if the system would only work for a minority of people. It seems like even the crude data input it had would be excellent to integrate into artificial limbs.
I've been on slashdot so long I'm starting to get out of touch with the cool stuff if it ain't on slashdot.
My left hand is retarded, always fat-fingering the 'a' and 's' keys while typing on home row. It's not much better when gaming with WASD. I'd snap one of these bad boys up if it it's better than my left hand mashing the WASD keys.
interact with the virtual world using their thoughts
I'm in management, you insensitive clod!
Are you coming on to me?
When I read the title I immediately started hoping they had invented a headset that would allow me to control other peoples' brains. This isn't nearly as cool.
Hikery.net - The best hiking site ever. Made by yours truly.
The brain is designed to control the body. Our hands are the most useful part of it, with reason.
...we could call it a POWER GLOVE! Maybe nintendo can use it for the next console.
The next step will have to be some sort of glove
But seriously, it'll have to be that. The big problem is making sure it understands our intentions enough to be useful. Imagine a pianist that can airplay wearing a glove that understand which key he meant to hit (How? Good luck with that...). THAT is the next step and it's hard as hell.
Until then, all we can do is make more ergonomic pads, mice (wiimote is a 3D mouse, fun but doesn't provide more efficient control) and keyboards.
...and only go into "work" when we want to?
The Future is already here, just unevenly distributed... THE ROBOTIC WAGELESS ECONOMY NOW! http://RoboEco.com/slash
if this works even a little- combined with voice control it would be a godsend.
I deal with pain-3 (on a 1-10 scale) all the time now. Mousing is much worse than typing tho. Partially carpal, partially chemo, partially diabetes. The laser off the eyes devices would also very helpful for the total package. And foot pedals.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Having to move my thumbs was too exhausting.
Now, if they could just do something about that stair climb out of my mom's basement.
Have gnu, will travel.
Governments won't care because the transfer of power from democratic governments will move to our increasingly large corporations - think feudal Corporations are interested in making money. Feudalism's a shit system for that. Think oligarchy instead. We don't need a hostile AI takeover to enslave us in the Matrix; we have been enslaving ourselves in the Matrix ever since the industrial revolution. To which I'd reply with the same question I have for all primitivists - yes, the industrial age fucked up society in a big way, but who chooses which 4/5ths of the world's population dies so we can all go back to some pastoral utopia?
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
"Wait until the government can get warrantless wiretaps on the logs of those things."
Yeah, it'd go something like this:
*left*
*left*
*up*
*right*
*down*
*down*
*up*
"Oh my lord, Johnson, he must be planning an attack! Scramble some F-16s and get a trace on the IP address of that Nintendo -- we've got to stop this guy before he hurts someone!"
--or--
*left*
*left*
*up*
*right*
*down*
*down*
*up*
"Hmmm... I think he's trying to get the 'Balls of Steel' cheat to activate. That's an arresting, Johnson, send the local authorities over his way. Kids these days think they can cheat their way through pinball. Disgusting."
Natalie Wood would be happy.
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
I seem to recall Atari dabbling with this kind of brain interface junk back in the days of the 2600. I can't recall the name or if it ever made it past the mock-up stage, but if it had been released, it'd probably have gone the way of the U-Force.
Most likely though, this thing will probably fail just as miserably as the Virtual Boy. People simply don't like uncomfortable, ugly-looking gadgets attached to their heads. (Especially stuff requiring frequent, repetative head movement.)
On the other hand, fans of the movie, "Strange Days" will probably eat it up.
8==8 Bones 8==8
Hacking Hawking. Or, Hawking Hawking... and grafting him onto Slashdot... Might improve the moderation system, or...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Modded +ln(e^1) Funny.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
I still want the USB version.. direct link to my brain.
Who cares about the hookup to your face -- you type much, much more explicitly informative things every day, and then send it over the tubes. Granted, most of the emotions are of the sophomoric variety, but people have been leaking their emotional state over IM for the last few decades, and with some fairly trivial text processing you could discover it. (Start with just searching for smilies and emotional words, then level up to training Bayes-based classifiers -- if it works for telling what mails are spam, I bet it will tell you which Livejournals are emo.)
Stub implementation:
LiveJournal#isEmo() { return true;}
See, 99% accurate with a single line of code.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
When zoning in to the community portal players should no longer experience uncontrolled explosive diarrhea. A small number of players were becoming comatose during the sleeper encounter, this bug should be fixed.
Thanks to eating disorders most chicks are reasonably good looking these days.
These are gamers we're talking about. A greasy film of Cheetos grease should be sufficient.
Indeed it is muscle movements that control most of it. Here's the video of the product: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxMux4uEkLI The whole time I saw it, I couldn't stop thinking "God, if only the makers of stonehenge had had force powers..."
'cause you sure aren't getting laid wearin' that!
If this somehow gets tied in with a Google Brain Implant, and someone decided to scam/hack players..... total Epicness would ensue!
::cough-noob-cough:: would be stupid enough to fall for it. Instead of scamming an account, you are effectively scamming their brain. Imagine the possibilities! :)
:(
Imagine that some player developed a scam similar to the Steam scam (The "Send me your user/pass and I'll unlock all the games for you" scam) and mentally posted a link online. All you would have to do is mentally post a message online and wait for some poor sap to Google/stumble across it. I'm sure that someone
Now if only someone would get brain implant technology to that point....
"D00d, I juzt pwned yur brainz. LOL kthnxbai."
Sorry if my thoughts are incoherent - I'm hungry.