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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/