Mobile App Screens Calls With Brain Waves

alphadogg writes "A mobile app under development can filter phone calls and reroute them directly to voicemail by reading brain waves, cutting the need for users to press buttons on the smartphone screen. The app, called Good Times, is the brainchild of Ruggero Scorcioni, CEO and founder of Brainyno, who presented the technology at the AT&T Innovation Showcase in New York, where some of the company's top research projects were highlighted. The app analyzes brainwaves as a phone call comes in, and depending on a person's mental state, reroutes a call. Information about brain waves is collected by a headset and sent to the smartphone via a Bluetooth connection, after which the app uses algorithms to analyze the status of a brain." Of course, the user has to be wearing a headset to detect the brainwaves. The software's creator hopes such detection can someday be integrated into devices like Google Glass.

Comments

Good luck!

[Mitreya]

Of course, the user has to be wearing a headset to detect the brainwaves. The software's creator hopes such detection can someday be integrated into devices like Google Glass.

I cannot get voice-dial to work on my new phone. It seems to pick something random and unrelated to what I say.

But I am sure a brain-wave detector will work seamlessly very soon.

Good idea.

[Cenan]

I'm sure it's a super idea, transmitting your mental state over Bluetooth, what could possibly go wrong?

Cat ears...

[Destoo]

A friend bought a set of brainwave sensing cat ears at Pax East two weeks ago.

They worked so-so with him, but during the weekend we saw a girl with a set on who was reading. The ears WERE moving left and right as she was concentrating on the text.

Re:Cat ears...

[dpidcoe]

As an owner of both the cat ears, and a neuroheadset made by a company called Emotive, I can say from firsthand experience that this sort of technology just isn't quite there yet. And in the case of using it to control things in a conscious manner, probably won't be for a long time. It's hard to rapidly change mental state, and it's often not a binary thing either. Add in the detection lag and even if I could consciously send the correct brainwaves to the thing it would still leave me sitting there wondering why I couldn't have just pressed a button or used a voice command instead.

The cat ears do an ok job of detecting mental state, though I feel like the "concentration" indicator of the ears wildly swinging back and forth is more of an error state than anything else, at least in my pair (after entering it, mine will continue to go nuts even if I remove the headset). In my opinion they're actually a good example of correct application of this kind of technology. Rather than relying on the user for direct control, they're monitoring the user and then taking a non-critical but useful action (indicating mental state to other people) based one what they observe.

In the case of the Emotive headset, it was a massive letdown. Their marketing is completely fine hyping up the "IT READS YOUR BRAIN!!11" selling point, and then showing videos of people controlling wheelchairs or moving a mouse pointer around, implying they're doing that with their thoughts. They actually aren't. Most of that is coming from facial muscles (the headset has pretty good detection of those, and can make an avatar match facial expressions with maybe 80% accuracy), or the gyro in the back of the headset. After a lot of fiddling with it over several weeks, the best I could make it do with pure brain scanning to differentiate between a baseline and 2 other mental states. All of them took me several seconds to get myself into, and it took the headset another second or so on top of that to detect and respond. They'd often get triggered or broken by random external events, and generally weren't reliable enough to actually use to control something.

In order to make this kind of technology continue on without turning it into a pariah (Flying cars and AI research anyone?), they need to do 3 things:

1) improve the detection

2) find useful applications for it that actually make sense. Anything that doesn't need rapid input or fine grained control is a good candidate. Moving a mouse or clicking buttons: bad. Altering which song it queues up next in your home entertainment system based on your current observed mental state: better.

3) expectations management. Detecting brain activity with something like an FMRI is fairly precise, but even then it would be tricky to make it give someone conscious, fine grained control over something. An MRI machine is bulky and expensive, your $50 EEG electrode is $50. These aren't devices that can ~read your brainwaves~, they're a single EEG electrode that's detecting electrical signals that may or may not be emanating from your brain. The people marketing these devices need to emphasize that. Otherwise they're going to end up 10 years down the road with a general public that's bitter over not being able to telepathically communicate like the borg.

And you can have the mindreading headset for free!

[RevWaldo]

Just check the Terms of Service agreement box and you're good to go!

What? You wanna read it first? Whatareya some kind of a nut?

.

I see this sequence:

[Westwood0720]

Phone Vibrates

Check Phone

Out of State Area Code

Reroutes Call to Ex Wife

It will be outlawed.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

For this technology to work the user should have some minimal detectable level of brain activity. So it is going to be totally useless to our congress critters and they would outlaw anything that is not personally useful to them.

Re:"Also..."

[alostpacket]

Screen calls? Eventually the app could answer and have the conversation we were going to have. Also there will be apps to make calls for us based on what we're thinking. If all goes well, these apps will call each other and have the entire conversation without us. I hope it is an interesting conversation!

I wonder if they will get their own facebook accounts....

The need for this tech

[Graydyn Young]

Oh man taking my phone out and hitting a button is so hard. If only I could get the same functionality by shaving my head, lubing it up a bit, sticking some pads to it, and then entering a hypnotic state.