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Samsung Researching How To Let You Control Your Phone With Your Brain
Nerval's Lobster writes "Samsung is testing a way to control your mobile device with your brainwaves. If that project succeeds, it would truly be a case of science fiction brought to real life. According to MIT Technology Review, Samsung's Emerging Technology Lab is collaborating with Roozbeh Jafari, assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Texas, Dallas, on the early-stage research. That research involves placing a cap 'studded with EEG-monitoring electrodes' atop the head of a convenient subject, who then concentrates on an onscreen icon blinking at a particular rate. Concentrate hard enough, and the subject can launch and interact with applications. However, Samsung also indicated that mind-controlled mobile devices are quite a ways off, if they ever appear in a market-ready form at all. 'Several years ago, a small keypad was the only input modality to control the phone, but nowadays the user can use voice, touch, gesture, and eye movement to control and interact with mobile devices,' Insoo Kim, Samsung's lead researcher, told the Review. 'Adding more input modalities will provide us with more convenient and richer ways of interacting with mobile devices.' In any case, it's a crazy concept, the sort of thing Philip K. Dick might have written up as a short story; but it's one evidently grounded in reality."
Using the amazing "fingers" brain interface device.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Apple has already patented the brain as well as anything samsung can possibly think of.
The other way....
It's been done by Emotiv http://www.emotiv.com/ back in 2007, and various other companies. What is new here?
Feels like another attempt by Samsung to do viral marketing just by associating itself to something hip.
While Apple researches which shade of shiny white will improve user experience...
Sure, first you can control the cell phone with your brain, then the cell phone can control your brain, and before you know it the Cybermen are invading.
How long before the phone controls your brain?
Some early customer focus groups have described the new UI as 'dubiously pocket friendly' and used such hurtful phrases as 'ugly' and 'Why does my phone need a team of medical technicians following me around?'.
A friendly reminder that Black and Decker makes the other major tool for improving the precision and SNR of brain activity data has so far been enough to shut them up.
I just finished The Divine Invasion and if that is evidence of his writing, I won't be reading any more of his stuff.
Sure, I got where he was going, but it was a trudge, a very long trudge, to get to the end of such a short work.
I realize what I like others may not like and vice versa, but I can't see how other than his thought process can be held up as a master of sci-fi writing.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Apple has already trademarked "Think Different" and the use of a "Reality Distortion Field" for a device to control the thought processes of it's user. As you can see, this "innovation" by Samsung is just repurposing the real innovation previously done by Apple.
tl;dr
In C++, your friends can see your privates.
That research involves placing a cap 'studded with EEG-monitoring electrodes' atop the head of a convenient subject
The first production models will come standard with the propeller attachment.
subject, who then concentrates on an onscreen icon blinking at a particular rate. Concentrate hard enough, and the subject can launch...
the car they are driving into the car front of them or pedestrians in the crosswalk.
You can turn vibrate on and off just by thinking about it.
I recall as the voice recognition technologies were developing and how increasingly accurate and impressive it became. Eventually, the problems of using it was voice strain just as the problems of typing is carpel tunnel syndrome. I believe a device controlled by the brain which is not like a natural interface in the body will become a point of stress with the user.
There would invariably and undoubtedly be a "training" with the user and following that, the user learns to communicate. But to "do" in a way that the device doesn't confuse normal activity with device control activity will require some sort of mental mode shifting and it is not hard to imagine how a distractive environment could completely interfere with the user's ability to interface with a device.
In my opinion, if they want to do it right, it would involve neural impants and a rendering system that produces "terminator vision" combined with physical gesture recognition.
This won't work, a lot of phone users don't have a brain.
The Phone Company
This is the only way BCIs will become common.
Oh, and if they actually work as well, of course.
Given current designs, I am not sure if they will be able to go that much further without direct surgery or implants.
Either that or some major breakthrough in brain-scan techniques.
So, this is a good thing regardless, as all their research may lead to a breakthrough in the evolution of BCI tech.
Personally I would rather just have really expensive cameras capable of eye-tracking the user of it, and then just making an eye-controlled interface.
Simple ideas such as drawing a closed L-shape (right-angled triangle) around a button to activate it, simple blink gestures and similar. (but not obtuse gestures that are just uncomfortable to perform constantly)
In fact, an eye-driven interface with brain activation for clicks and actions would be the best of both worlds.
Current BCIs can handle that fine, now it would be the eye-tracking from such a distance and various angles from the face.
The move to glasses-based phones would be a good one. Just not awful designs like Google Glass. (not to mention the expense, akdbvyuva WHY?! Nobody is going to buy that just to look like a twat!... right?)
There are far better augmented reality designs than Google Glass IMO, it has so many disadvantages in its design from what I have heard and saw so far.
Long story short, that tiny-ass screen and its position are just plain awful. Having to look down to align it with things of interest is not a good design. Neck strain much?
A far better design would be either a full-width same-height as GG, or a full-height and same-width as GG. More so the latter.
In the case of the full-height version, putting this on the inside of the eye would also be better than on the outside.
On the inside closest to your nose, it is far easier to align it to things you are actually looking at, while not being in the way of your natural resting position.
On the outside, it would just obscure things and probably just be a health-hazard in most cases.
It would also be a nice big tall screen, good for reading, good for actually seeing AR related things as well. Meanwhile at Google Glass, head falling off and missing everything.
Where is my job Google? I've been waiting for years. Still a better inventor, programmer and advertiser than your own teams. God.
I would like for them to stop allowing products into the OS image that drain the battery unnecessarily. "Connection optimizers" are a prime target.
I feel this'd work best on a head mounted device, since it'll already be in proximity to the brain, and I wouldn't have to mutter "glass..." every time I wanted to do something. Can't you already buy this kind of technology off the shelf though? Such as Emotiv.
I beat Samsung to it.
I currently use my brain to control my Galaxy S3. Its uses an ingenious "series of tubes" coupled to a mind boggling number of complex electrochemical reactions within a complex neural network to control the muscle tissue that connects to the tendons that drive my fingers which directly connect to the Galaxy S3.
Samsung should stop this R&D ( why reinvent the wheel when you can licence the design for cheaper ) and simply start paying me royalties for every Smartphone and tablet they sell.
yet another tech toy that George W. can't use...
This will be revolutionary! I can't believe no one thought of it before!!!!!
a combination refrigerator/time machine!
Yep, they think really BIG at Samsung.
Now it's just a small matter of implementing it.
More news at 11.
Smart phones, dumb people. It will never work.
Were you paid by Samsung to try to hijack or otherwise obfuscate this discussion?
Note that Samsung is using American technology to defeat Apple in the marketplace. Apple had better be more agile and have quantum leaps in technology, because Samsung is on a shorter product cycle schedule.
My date asks "what are you thinking", and a few seconds later my phone starts playing porn who's star kinda looks like her.
I have a friend who is quadriplegic. She needs a device that lets her BRAIN control her ARMS AND LEGS. They want to give her a phone she can dial with her MIND. Never mind that fact that it's a phone, which means to use it she probably will want to use her VOICE which works just fine.
is by concentrating on using a phone. A much better thing to do with your brain is study mathematics or literature or campaign for civil and human rights
When I want to make a phone call, my brain waves move my hands to make the call.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
http://www.neurosky.com/
If I could make the prices go down with my brain I could finally buy one!
*walks up next to someone and thinks* "google image search, scat porn, safe-search off, share results on facebook, open first twenty results in new tabs" *runs away*
for the day when people learn to control their brain with their brain.
You're embarassing yourself Jeremiah Cornelius http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3581857&cid=43276741 since you posted that using your registered username by mistake (instead of your usual anonymous coward submissions by the 100's the past 2-3 months now on slashdot) giving away it's you spamming this forums almost constantly, just as you have in the post I just replied to.