Also, there are plans to release a SDK for the device as well so developers can use the biometric data for custom applications and integration (games, accessibility, biofeedback, science, etc).
The NIA hardware captures EMG (muscle), EOG (eye), and EEG (brainwave) data although the first release of the product software only supports muscle-based signals (eye-brow perks, facial tension, etc).
Muscle signal data is the easiest and most dependable across all body types which was why it was selected for first release to consumers. Other signals we record such as EOG/EEG are useful for input mapping, but require a fair amount of per user calibration because biometric properties can vary significantly from person to person. The other signals are not quite as "plug'n'play" as muscle is, which was why they are excluded from the initial product release.
The hardware and the algorithms behind it were developed over many years as accessibility technology for people with physical disabilities. I helped develop the gaming component of the technology several years ago using the Cyberlink hardware and this new hardware and software is built upon many lessons learned since then. (Discovery Channel Interview: http://www.brainfingers.com/media/)
We have some very cool stuff slated for release. Stay tuned!:)
Yes, it is a HID device.:) It was designed to work on as many platforms as possible that support USB without requiring custom drivers. At the moment, however, the only software that exists for it is Windows based. Software to support other platforms is expected in the future.
I recently bought a copy of CeeBot http://www.ceebot.com/ceebot/index-e.php for my nephew and it was very very cool. You write code that is very java-like that control an on-screen robot. The product has a great interface and is a great way to introduce kids to programming while keeping their interest with the nice 3D graphics.
You can also download the demo which is probably fine for the purposes you want it for.
Great product, great for kids. I myself started out programming on the C64 and loved that I knew intimately how the machine worked. Unfortunately, its hard to provide a similar experience now-a-days and I looked around for a long time for something like CeeBot that would provide similar magic to my first experience with computers.
Another cool product is MindRover (another robot programming game) but it gets pretty complicated pretty quickly.
I am fortunate to have some really avid board gamers as friends who have introduced me to a number of cool games. As other posters have mentioned, the game "Zombies!!!" is a lot of fun... "Lord of the Fries" can be a quick and fun game as well. I *really* enjoy playing "Drakon" which has a random element, but requires a lot of strategy to play well. In Drakon, players must collect gold and escape Drakon's dungeon while placing room pieces and growing the size of the dungeon maze.
I really enjoy the card game "Munchkin" a lot for the humor. Not a board game, but a lot of fun.:)
If you enjoy fantasy/adventure board games, I highly suggest Runebound! A lot of fun, best played with more than two players, but is totally playable with only two. The game can take several hours, depending on how you play.:)
I got some good exposure of some good board games on the website GameTable Online that eventually caused me to buy an actual copy of the Drakon and Lord of the Fries. To give you some more gaming ideas, a run-down with pictures and descriptions of top games listed on their website include:
Bosworth Cosmic Wimpout Drakon Igel Argern Kill Dr. Lucky Lord of the Fries Nuclear War Vampire by Reiner Knizia Battle for Olympus Battle of the Bands Cargo Info Condottiere Creepy Freaks Euphrat & Tigris by Reiner Knizia Lemmings in Space Overthrone Ursuppe Who Stole Ed's Pants? Wiz-War Heroes Incorporated J.U.M.P. Management Material Nuclear Escalation Nuclear Proliferation Seasons SOLD! Sucking Vacuum WarHamster Rally Witch Trial
I am a member of a small group that is dedicated to helping game developers provide better game accessibility features to their games. We recently wrote a whitepaper for game developers discussing the issues of game accessibility that can be found here:
http://www.igda.org/accessibility/IGDA_Accessibi li ty_WhitePaper.pdf
The whitepaper discusses a number of topics including:
Definition: What is Game Accessibility? Types of Disabilities and Limiting Conditions Scope of the Problem Statistics Why is Accessibility Important? How Can we Provide Accessibility in Games? Possible Approaches Modern Game Accessibility Current State of Game Accessibility
The members of our group have experience with both game development and accessibility technologies so we do a lot of work to help 'bridge the gap' between the two subjects.
We are working to bring a number of resources together to help game developers and are happy to talk to companies interested in tackling this very important subject.
Our group webpage can be found here:
http://www.igda.org/accessibility/...and our group can be contacted directly using:
accessibility *AT* igda *DOT* org
Feel free to contact us regarding this issue and we'll do what we can to help.:)
My name is Michael McIntosh and I am one of the core members of the Games Accessibility SIG (http://www.igda.org/accessibility/) founded by Thomas Westin of Pin Interactive. There are organizations, like ourselves, examining the problem of how to makes games accessible for people with disabilities and working to come up with potential solutions and offer guidance to the game development community on how to offer this functionality. This is a very important quality of life issue for those with disabilities because without accessibility technology and practices whole avenues of recreational opportunities are not available to them. I'm an avid gamer myself and it is one of the ways I use to deal with stress and occassional socialize with multiplayer mayhem. There are many games, especially puzzle games, that can be modified ever so slightly to be played by people with visual, auditory or physical disabilities. I personally spent time working with an off-the-shelf game "Oni" (by Bungie Studios) to make it accessible for people with physical disabilities. Severe cognitive disability requires a different approach altogether, but there are plenty of people who are fully cognitively able to appreciate the complexities of a great (or bad) video game that simply lack the means of either 1) control or 2) feedback. We are currently working on a white-paper which is due to come out soon about the current state of accessibility technology and how it can be applied to games accessibility. I find it really refreshing that I am seeing more articles regarding this subject. As a bonus, a lot of work that goes into user-interface and accessibility design directly benefit able-bodied individuals as well. The television remote control is a prefect example.:) It was originally designed to be an assistive technology device for people with disabilities but it now used by couch potatoes everywhere!:)
Heya Mike, thanks for the compliment! I'm one of two software developers that are working on the Cyberlink Brainfingers technology. In early May we were featured in a special on the Discovery channel called "KAPOW! Superhero Science" where I demonstrated playing the videogame "Oni" using our Cyberlink product and our latest game-enabled software. We've developed software that, using the Cyberlink, can emulate mouse and keyboard macros to allow you to play off-the-shelf games in a novel way. The program is supposed to air again either in June or July. Is that how you found out about us?
I had a couple points I wanted to address regarding your post:
1) We are working on providing a more cost effective version of the Cyberlink that would appeal to the mainstream market. Right now the technology is used primarily for people with physical disabilities but we are currently working on allowing it to be used with games. You can actually fire weapons more quickly using a Cyberlink headband than you can by clicking a mouse button in some cases. Its pretty trippy to use it with a game like Unreal Tournament because as soon as you think about pulling the trigger, you probably already have.:) I can fire 100 milliseconds faster than I normally can using a mouse button. An average person takes about 300 ms to react to something. Using the Cyberlink I can react in 200 ms, sometimes even faster if I'm really "in the zone". It doesn't seem like much, but it can make a significant difference in fast paced games, especially with instant-fire type weapons.
2) We are also taking part in a newly forming "Game Accessibility" committee being headed up by Thomas Weston of Pin Interactive. Our charter involves helping to make games easier to use for people with disabilities. An article about the subject can be found under the title Game Accessibility on the International Game Developers Association website.
How does that apply to you? Well, a lot of very good technology that is designed for people with disabilities ends up in the mainstream consumer market before long. The television remote control is a fine example of such a technology. The Cyberlink (brainfingers) technology originally was part of military research to allow pilots to fly and otherwise control aircraft using brainwaves at the Wright Patterson Airforce base. A scientist working on the project eventually left to form the company Brain Actuated Technologies which I found out about and then went to work with them due to the work that was done at Patterson.:)
Out of curiousity, if a device was available to the general public that allowed people to play video games using brain control, how much would people be willing to spend for something like that? Does the idea of such a thing freak people out?
As someone who has been working from home in Boston for a company located in Ohio, I have an idea about some of the issues regarding managing remote teams and assets. Since it is unlikely you want to be spending lots of money on long distance telephone calls, I am assuming the the preferred communication medium is going to be email for most cases.
A problem with managing remote programmers is that it can be hard to quantify our work. This is where I suggest weekly reports. I know most everyone hates to do something like that, but they are useful for both the employer and the programmer. A weekly report due friday allows the programmer to quantify their work for the week, explain programmatic issues and provide a refresher for them monday morning when they resume work. As a team building exercise, it can be useful to read each others reports when you run into a problem because someone may have already ran into it. I may be working on server code and am having a problem with UDP packets and someone else may have an insight that would help me.
For the employer, it helps you understand exactly where each programmer is at in the project. If a junior programmer seems to be hung up on the same problem for a couple weeks, you might have another programmer temporarily help him resolve it or move him/her onto a different task. Since you can't physically be there to check on progress, this is the next best thing. If it gets to the point where you have a performance review, there is a lot of existing documentation available for you to review.
We do our weekly reports in HTML so it can be viewed from any machine with a browser. As someone who hops back and forth between Unix and Win32 environments, I prefer HTML over the dreaded Word Document. Bleh. The hyperlink ability is nice because it can refer to earlier reports.
Regarding HTML weekly reports, I'd suggest making a password protected website available to all team members that contains the weekly report archive as well as a couple discussion boards. You can have general team announcements and have general product discussions. I believe a board would probably be better since you'll probably have team members in different timezones. The discussions can also serve as a knowledge repository. If, 7 months down the road, you wonder why one of the developed programs uses TCP instead of UDP you might find the answer several months ago in a discussion about that very subject. At my previous job, Terra Lycos, occassionaly someone on the team would wonder why we did something a certain way. Often the answer was that it wasn't feasible when we first implimented the technology. Or we didn't have the hardware. Or we didn't have the staff. Etc. Project histories (especially searchable ones) are damn useful.
Well, what is a little more difficult for me to measure is the amount of time it takes us to perceive and react to stimulus. It takes a certain amount of time for your eyes to perceive the visual change and a certain amount of time for you to process and react to the change.
Can the electrodes help you aim better in Quake? Yes and No. With the Cyberlink, there is a mode called "click mode" which is only detects click signals from the electrical activitity it picks up from your forehead. So, if you are aiming and the crosshairs are over the target, by being able to react 100ms quicker, you have more of a chance of firing the weapon while you are aiming directly at your target. If you had to click a mouse button or press a key, there is a lag between your desire to fire and your ability to actually do so. That might cause you to miss your target.
But, the human body compensates for these things. From experience your brain knows there is some lag time between the desire to move a muscle and when it actually moves. But most of the time that is just fine. ASAP is usually quick enough.:)
Now, mapping a device to mouse movement AND clicking is slower. I can aim much more quickly moving the mouse around by hand than I can using my brainwaves. I can SHOOT faster using using the device, but I cannot move the mouse with more accuracy or speed that a normal person can with your hands.
Our hands are very specialized and finely tuned due to a years of use. When you try to learn to use a different stimulus to moving things around, it is almost akin to having a new appendage. It takes time for a baby to learn how to use their arms, legs and fingers. The same goes for tech that gives us new methods of control.
One thing that is a big help with fine control in the physical world is friction. The friction between muscles and where your hand contacts the mouse is very useful when you want to slow down and aim carefully. A problem with devices like this is there is no real friction, so we have to come up with methods to make virtual friction. A lot more work needs to go into this area to give a finer degree of control using this technology.:)
As someone who works with a related technology (Brain Actuated Technology), I wanted to address some of the concerns I've seen a few people raise. Before I get too deeply into the discussion, I'll refer you to a previous reponse I made to the "Surfing The Net With Brainwaves?" article. If you are curious to see what I have said already about the subject, check it out.
I'm a software engineer that works with a device called a Cyberlink that allows you to control the mouse cursor (and other peripherals) using a combination of Brain/Body signals (EEG, EMG & EOG).
From the electrode arrangement in the NASA picture I saw, it looks like they using EMG (electromyograph) signals to detect discreet electrical impulses for specific muscles. There is a lot of electrical energy involved in actuating the muscles in your body, the hard part is figuring which muscle signals of the multitudes are the ones you care about.
One of the most difficult aspects of these types of technologies is resolving a "rest state". Energy is expended even when you are trying to hold a bodypart, like your arm, still. If the movement of a joystick/mouse/wheel was mapped directly electrical activity in your arm, wrists and hands you would have to worry about keeping them stationary to begin with so you wouldn't generate interference (and cause the device to move left when you wish it to stay where it is). Electrically, we are very noisy...
If you aren't concentrating, it may cause control to "drift". For example, if I move the mouse around with my hand and I let go, the mouse cursor usually will remain exactly where you left it on the screen. But with devices that use raw biosignals, it is hard to "turn-off" electrical signals present in your body so that the device interpreting them will stop reacting to them. When I use the brain actuated mouse interface with the Cyberlink, its kinda hard to keep the mouse from NOT moving. Sure, I can move it up/down/left/right when I want to, but when I don't want it to move, it is hard to prevent it from "drifting" slightly in some direction. These are aspects of the technology I am working on fixing. As such, I am intimately familiar with most of the difficulties involved.
In the case of picking up impulses meant for your hands and arm, it becomes even harder because we use our hands all the time for other tasks.
But the good news is that these things can be tuned. There are ways around these limitations and work is being done to resolve these issues. I suffer from tendonitis in my wrists, so *I* at least have a very vested interest in making this technology work.:) This technology is tremendously useful for people with physical disabilities and there is work being done to make the technology more appealing to able-bodied persons as well. Your concerns are duly noted. (by me, at least).
If you have additional questions or concerns for someone who is familiar with this technology, feel free to drop me an email and I will do what I can to answer your questions.:)
Mmm, brain-controlled railguns...;P
PS: An interesting side-note is that it seems to take around 100 milliseconds (1/10 of a second) for a signal to be sent from your brain to get to your index finger and trigger movement *click*. By using a reflex tester (http://www.reflexgame.com/) the quickest I can seem to consistantly react to the screen changing color and click 'stop' seems to be 0.33 seconds. While using the Cyberlink (with electrodes on my forehead) I am able to consistantly react in only 0.22 seconds. So, my reaction time is about 1/10 of a second faster if I don't have to wait for the signal to travel all the way down to my finger. I'm already pretty dangerous in games like Unreal and Quake, but now I can fire that much faster. It is, however, a very odd feeling. You fire faster than you are expecting to. Its surprising. I keep thinking "Whoa, I fired already?" Eventually, we'll all be able to be LPBs of a different variety.;P
I'm afraid I cannot agree with you there. Bots can and do take up much more bandwidth AT ONCE than users do. I work for a search engine and this is something I know. The spiders (bots) we use at Lycos are very, very, very fast and if we are not careful we can bring an unsuspecting web-server to its KNEES as the spider recursively tries to fetch every document it is allowed as quickly as possible. One way we get around it is that we randomize our website documents list so that a spider isn't devoting all of its cycles to one website. We have been doing this a long time and know how to be "polite" when gathering data.
Outside of the issue of bandwidth, there is the issue of profitability. Part of many websites income is derived from banner ads. If a bot scours a website to harvest the content, it prevents the end users from seeing some of the advertisements they would have normally have seen by exploring it on their own. One example of where this hurts is a Meta Search engine that trolls several search engines and produces a compiled list of search results. Search engines have millions of dollars invested in hardware, software, bandwidth and staff to make it all work. Every single query has a real monetary cost associated with it. Every free service has its cost. A Meta Search engine bot like that only does about %5 of the total work involved producing the results or content that it displays. Now, a site like that makes its OWN profit from users with minimal money out of its own pocket (of which none goes to the companies doing most of the real hard work).
I completely understand why companies would get cranky about someone repeatedly grabbing computationally intense data from their site and profiting from it as they suck money and resources away from the provider of said data.
One way websites are about to track when people visit a site is "tracking gifs". Usually very small 1x1 pixel images that give them a general idea of how many visitors a site is receiving. Reports are generated and they get PAID by advertisers based upon this info. Bots RARELY grab anything but content. If you go to a webpage with images embedded in it, your web browser individually requests (most of the time barring cached data) each image. Since bots don't tend to request this graphical "fluff" intended for hyoomans, owners of the site notice an increase in site traffic and resource drains and a decrease in "ad impressions" when a bot "isn't polite". Yes, I do realize that some make revenue in other ways, but bots can use up resources faster than humans can regardless. With people your traffic usually scales slowly up or down. You can add or remove hardware to deal with the demand. Sometimes when a bot hits your webserver it is such a huge spike in requests for data it kills the server. Then all the legitimate users get cranky. Or, a more minor form is that it makes the s e r v e r sllluuuugggggiiish.
Anywhoo... Thats my $1.25 on the matter. Cheers. - Sartian
There's a good chance that was the chance that was the Cyberlink. (www.brainfingers.com) The inventor, Andrew Junker, worked in the armed services and it was how I first discovered the technology myself. I saw a pilot in a simulator with a headband that said "Cyberlink" in a documentary about the future of avionics. Approximately 2.3 seconds later I was on the 'Net looking for the device so I could have one.:)
The technology itself is something that was discovered years ago but it isn't until recently that advances have made the cost involved low enough to have visiblity for the average consumer. I am a software engineer working with Andrew Junker, the creator of the Cyberlink, on just such technology. The device allows me to sit in front of my computer, without the need to literally lift a finger, and move the mouse cursor around and click and open applications and such. You wear a headband with three (3) eletrodes that rest on your forehead that pick up EEG, EOG and EMG signals for analysis and control. The website itself is a little dated since we're adding new features that we have yet to post. Being a cross-platform developer I am rewriting the API to be able to compile on nearly any environment. Even my Palm Pilot.;P The people that have already benefitted from this technology greatly are those that have had a serious spinal injury or something that leaves them paralyzed and unable to interact with others in a normal way. Some have learned how to use the Cyberlink well enough to type messages to their family after years of silence in a vegetative state. Pretty cool stuff.;P *chuckle* It has a couple ways to be used and most people can pick up basic control with the unit within a few minutes. Since I suffer from tendonitis I'd also interested in the technology as a way to allow my wrists to recover from the injury. Its cool technology and it is available now... If interested, check it out at www.brainfingers.com.. The website even has a message board where people discuss some of the basics about the device and the technology involved. If you have any questions about what sorts of things the development API allows you to do, you can drop me an email at cyberlink_at_lifepod_dot_com. Cheers.:)
Michael
Slashdot Mirror
Also, there are plans to release a SDK for the device as well so developers can use the biometric data for custom applications and integration (games, accessibility, biofeedback, science, etc).
:)
The NIA hardware captures EMG (muscle), EOG (eye), and EEG (brainwave) data although the first release of the product software only supports muscle-based signals (eye-brow perks, facial tension, etc).
Muscle signal data is the easiest and most dependable across all body types which was why it was selected for first release to consumers. Other signals we record such as EOG/EEG are useful for input mapping, but require a fair amount of per user calibration because biometric properties can vary significantly from person to person. The other signals are not quite as "plug'n'play" as muscle is, which was why they are excluded from the initial product release.
The hardware and the algorithms behind it were developed over many years as accessibility technology for people with physical disabilities. I helped develop the gaming component of the technology several years ago using the Cyberlink hardware and this new hardware and software is built upon many lessons learned since then. (Discovery Channel Interview: http://www.brainfingers.com/media/)
We have some very cool stuff slated for release. Stay tuned!
-Michael McIntosh
Yes, it is a HID device. :) It was designed to work on as many platforms as possible that support USB without requiring custom drivers. At the moment, however, the only software that exists for it is Windows based. Software to support other platforms is expected in the future.
I recently bought a copy of CeeBot http://www.ceebot.com/ceebot/index-e.php for my nephew and it was very very cool. You write code that is very java-like that control an on-screen robot. The product has a great interface and is a great way to introduce kids to programming while keeping their interest with the nice 3D graphics.
You can also download the demo which is probably fine for the purposes you want it for.
Great product, great for kids. I myself started out programming on the C64 and loved that I knew intimately how the machine worked. Unfortunately, its hard to provide a similar experience now-a-days and I looked around for a long time for something like CeeBot that would provide similar magic to my first experience with computers.
Another cool product is MindRover (another robot programming game) but it gets pretty complicated pretty quickly.
Good luck!
-Michael
I am fortunate to have some really avid board gamers as friends who have introduced me to a number of cool games. As other posters have mentioned, the game "Zombies!!!" is a lot of fun... "Lord of the Fries" can be a quick and fun game as well. I *really* enjoy playing "Drakon" which has a random element, but requires a lot of strategy to play well. In Drakon, players must collect gold and escape Drakon's dungeon while placing room pieces and growing the size of the dungeon maze.
I really enjoy the card game "Munchkin" a lot for the humor. Not a board game, but a lot of fun. :)
If you enjoy fantasy/adventure board games, I highly suggest Runebound! A lot of fun, best played with more than two players, but is totally playable with only two. The game can take several hours, depending on how you play. :)
I got some good exposure of some good board games on the website GameTable Online that eventually caused me to buy an actual copy of the Drakon and Lord of the Fries. To give you some more gaming ideas, a run-down with pictures and descriptions of top games listed on their website include:
Good luck in your search!I am a member of a small group that is dedicated to helping game developers provide better game accessibility features to their games. We recently wrote a whitepaper for game developers discussing the issues of game accessibility that can be found here:
i li ty_WhitePaper.pdf
...and our group can be contacted directly using:
:)
http://www.igda.org/accessibility/IGDA_Accessib
The whitepaper discusses a number of topics including:
Definition: What is Game Accessibility?
Types of Disabilities and Limiting Conditions
Scope of the Problem
Statistics
Why is Accessibility Important?
How Can we Provide Accessibility in Games? Possible Approaches
Modern Game Accessibility
Current State of Game Accessibility
The members of our group have experience with both game development and accessibility technologies so we do a lot of work to help 'bridge the gap' between the two subjects.
We are working to bring a number of resources together to help game developers and are happy to talk to companies interested in tackling this very important subject.
Our group webpage can be found here:
http://www.igda.org/accessibility/
accessibility *AT* igda *DOT* org
Feel free to contact us regarding this issue and we'll do what we can to help.
-Michael McIntosh
My name is Michael McIntosh and I am one of the core members of the Games Accessibility SIG (http://www.igda.org/accessibility/) founded by Thomas Westin of Pin Interactive. There are organizations, like ourselves, examining the problem of how to makes games accessible for people with disabilities and working to come up with potential solutions and offer guidance to the game development community on how to offer this functionality. This is a very important quality of life issue for those with disabilities because without accessibility technology and practices whole avenues of recreational opportunities are not available to them. I'm an avid gamer myself and it is one of the ways I use to deal with stress and occassional socialize with multiplayer mayhem. There are many games, especially puzzle games, that can be modified ever so slightly to be played by people with visual, auditory or physical disabilities. I personally spent time working with an off-the-shelf game "Oni" (by Bungie Studios) to make it accessible for people with physical disabilities. Severe cognitive disability requires a different approach altogether, but there are plenty of people who are fully cognitively able to appreciate the complexities of a great (or bad) video game that simply lack the means of either 1) control or 2) feedback. We are currently working on a white-paper which is due to come out soon about the current state of accessibility technology and how it can be applied to games accessibility. I find it really refreshing that I am seeing more articles regarding this subject. As a bonus, a lot of work that goes into user-interface and accessibility design directly benefit able-bodied individuals as well. The television remote control is a prefect example. :) It was originally designed to be an assistive technology device for people with disabilities but it now used by couch potatoes everywhere! :)
Cheers,
Michael
Heya Mike, thanks for the compliment! I'm one of two software developers that are working on the Cyberlink Brainfingers technology. In early May we were featured in a special on the Discovery channel called "KAPOW! Superhero Science" where I demonstrated playing the videogame "Oni" using our Cyberlink product and our latest game-enabled software. We've developed software that, using the Cyberlink, can emulate mouse and keyboard macros to allow you to play off-the-shelf games in a novel way. The program is supposed to air again either in June or July. Is that how you found out about us?
:) I can fire 100 milliseconds faster than I normally can using a mouse button. An average person takes about 300 ms to react to something. Using the Cyberlink I can react in 200 ms, sometimes even faster if I'm really "in the zone". It doesn't seem like much, but it can make a significant difference in fast paced games, especially with instant-fire type weapons.
:)
:)
I had a couple points I wanted to address regarding your post:
1) We are working on providing a more cost effective version of the Cyberlink that would appeal to the mainstream market. Right now the technology is used primarily for people with physical disabilities but we are currently working on allowing it to be used with games. You can actually fire weapons more quickly using a Cyberlink headband than you can by clicking a mouse button in some cases. Its pretty trippy to use it with a game like Unreal Tournament because as soon as you think about pulling the trigger, you probably already have.
2) We are also taking part in a newly forming "Game Accessibility" committee being headed up by Thomas Weston of Pin Interactive. Our charter involves helping to make games easier to use for people with disabilities. An article about the subject can be found under the title Game Accessibility on the International Game Developers Association website.
How does that apply to you? Well, a lot of very good technology that is designed for people with disabilities ends up in the mainstream consumer market before long. The television remote control is a fine example of such a technology. The Cyberlink (brainfingers) technology originally was part of military research to allow pilots to fly and otherwise control aircraft using brainwaves at the Wright Patterson Airforce base. A scientist working on the project eventually left to form the company Brain Actuated Technologies which I found out about and then went to work with them due to the work that was done at Patterson.
Out of curiousity, if a device was available to the general public that allowed people to play video games using brain control, how much would people be willing to spend for something like that? Does the idea of such a thing freak people out?
Take care all.
Michael McIntosh
Senior Software Developer
Brain Actuated Technologies, Inc.
http://www.brainfingers.com
A problem with managing remote programmers is that it can be hard to quantify our work. This is where I suggest weekly reports. I know most everyone hates to do something like that, but they are useful for both the employer and the programmer. A weekly report due friday allows the programmer to quantify their work for the week, explain programmatic issues and provide a refresher for them monday morning when they resume work. As a team building exercise, it can be useful to read each others reports when you run into a problem because someone may have already ran into it. I may be working on server code and am having a problem with UDP packets and someone else may have an insight that would help me.
For the employer, it helps you understand exactly where each programmer is at in the project. If a junior programmer seems to be hung up on the same problem for a couple weeks, you might have another programmer temporarily help him resolve it or move him/her onto a different task. Since you can't physically be there to check on progress, this is the next best thing. If it gets to the point where you have a performance review, there is a lot of existing documentation available for you to review.
We do our weekly reports in HTML so it can be viewed from any machine with a browser. As someone who hops back and forth between Unix and Win32 environments, I prefer HTML over the dreaded Word Document. Bleh. The hyperlink ability is nice because it can refer to earlier reports.
Regarding HTML weekly reports, I'd suggest making a password protected website available to all team members that contains the weekly report archive as well as a couple discussion boards. You can have general team announcements and have general product discussions. I believe a board would probably be better since you'll probably have team members in different timezones. The discussions can also serve as a knowledge repository. If, 7 months down the road, you wonder why one of the developed programs uses TCP instead of UDP you might find the answer several months ago in a discussion about that very subject. At my previous job, Terra Lycos, occassionaly someone on the team would wonder why we did something a certain way. Often the answer was that it wasn't feasible when we first implimented the technology. Or we didn't have the hardware. Or we didn't have the staff. Etc. Project histories (especially searchable ones) are damn useful.
Thats my 2 cents worth... I hope it helps. :)
Michael
Well, what is a little more difficult for me to measure is the amount of time it takes us to perceive and react to stimulus. It takes a certain amount of time for your eyes to perceive the visual change and a certain amount of time for you to process and react to the change.
Can the electrodes help you aim better in Quake? Yes and No. With the Cyberlink, there is a mode called "click mode" which is only detects click signals from the electrical activitity it picks up from your forehead. So, if you are aiming and the crosshairs are over the target, by being able to react 100ms quicker, you have more of a chance of firing the weapon while you are aiming directly at your target. If you had to click a mouse button or press a key, there is a lag between your desire to fire and your ability to actually do so. That might cause you to miss your target.
But, the human body compensates for these things. From experience your brain knows there is some lag time between the desire to move a muscle and when it actually moves. But most of the time that is just fine. ASAP is usually quick enough. :)
Now, mapping a device to mouse movement AND clicking is slower. I can aim much more quickly moving the mouse around by hand than I can using my brainwaves. I can SHOOT faster using using the device, but I cannot move the mouse with more accuracy or speed that a normal person can with your hands.
Our hands are very specialized and finely tuned due to a years of use. When you try to learn to use a different stimulus to moving things around, it is almost akin to having a new appendage. It takes time for a baby to learn how to use their arms, legs and fingers. The same goes for tech that gives us new methods of control.
One thing that is a big help with fine control in the physical world is friction. The friction between muscles and where your hand contacts the mouse is very useful when you want to slow down and aim carefully. A problem with devices like this is there is no real friction, so we have to come up with methods to make virtual friction. A lot more work needs to go into this area to give a finer degree of control using this technology. :)
I hope that answered your question. :)
Michael
As someone who works with a related technology (Brain Actuated Technology), I wanted to address some of the concerns I've seen a few people raise. Before I get too deeply into the discussion, I'll refer you to a previous reponse I made to the "Surfing The Net With Brainwaves?" article. If you are curious to see what I have said already about the subject, check it out.
I'm a software engineer that works with a device called a Cyberlink that allows you to control the mouse cursor (and other peripherals) using a combination of Brain/Body signals (EEG, EMG & EOG).
From the electrode arrangement in the NASA picture I saw, it looks like they using EMG (electromyograph) signals to detect discreet electrical impulses for specific muscles. There is a lot of electrical energy involved in actuating the muscles in your body, the hard part is figuring which muscle signals of the multitudes are the ones you care about.
One of the most difficult aspects of these types of technologies is resolving a "rest state". Energy is expended even when you are trying to hold a bodypart, like your arm, still. If the movement of a joystick/mouse/wheel was mapped directly electrical activity in your arm, wrists and hands you would have to worry about keeping them stationary to begin with so you wouldn't generate interference (and cause the device to move left when you wish it to stay where it is). Electrically, we are very noisy...
If you aren't concentrating, it may cause control to "drift". For example, if I move the mouse around with my hand and I let go, the mouse cursor usually will remain exactly where you left it on the screen. But with devices that use raw biosignals, it is hard to "turn-off" electrical signals present in your body so that the device interpreting them will stop reacting to them. When I use the brain actuated mouse interface with the Cyberlink, its kinda hard to keep the mouse from NOT moving. Sure, I can move it up/down/left/right when I want to, but when I don't want it to move, it is hard to prevent it from "drifting" slightly in some direction. These are aspects of the technology I am working on fixing. As such, I am intimately familiar with most of the difficulties involved.
In the case of picking up impulses meant for your hands and arm, it becomes even harder because we use our hands all the time for other tasks.
But the good news is that these things can be tuned. There are ways around these limitations and work is being done to resolve these issues. I suffer from tendonitis in my wrists, so *I* at least have a very vested interest in making this technology work. :) This technology is tremendously useful for people with physical disabilities and there is work being done to make the technology more appealing to able-bodied persons as well. Your concerns are duly noted. (by me, at least).
If you have additional questions or concerns for someone who is familiar with this technology, feel free to drop me an email and I will do what I can to answer your questions. :)
Mmm, brain-controlled railguns... ;P
PS: An interesting side-note is that it seems to take around 100 milliseconds (1/10 of a second) for a signal to be sent from your brain to get to your index finger and trigger movement *click*. By using a reflex tester (http://www.reflexgame.com/) the quickest I can seem to consistantly react to the screen changing color and click 'stop' seems to be 0.33 seconds. While using the Cyberlink (with electrodes on my forehead) I am able to consistantly react in only 0.22 seconds. So, my reaction time is about 1/10 of a second faster if I don't have to wait for the signal to travel all the way down to my finger. I'm already pretty dangerous in games like Unreal and Quake, but now I can fire that much faster. It is, however, a very odd feeling. You fire faster than you are expecting to. Its surprising. I keep thinking "Whoa, I fired already?" Eventually, we'll all be able to be LPBs of a different variety. ;P
Cheers,
Michael
Outside of the issue of bandwidth, there is the issue of profitability. Part of many websites income is derived from banner ads. If a bot scours a website to harvest the content, it prevents the end users from seeing some of the advertisements they would have normally have seen by exploring it on their own. One example of where this hurts is a Meta Search engine that trolls several search engines and produces a compiled list of search results. Search engines have millions of dollars invested in hardware, software, bandwidth and staff to make it all work. Every single query has a real monetary cost associated with it. Every free service has its cost. A Meta Search engine bot like that only does about %5 of the total work involved producing the results or content that it displays. Now, a site like that makes its OWN profit from users with minimal money out of its own pocket (of which none goes to the companies doing most of the real hard work).
I completely understand why companies would get cranky about someone repeatedly grabbing computationally intense data from their site and profiting from it as they suck money and resources away from the provider of said data.
One way websites are about to track when people visit a site is "tracking gifs". Usually very small 1x1 pixel images that give them a general idea of how many visitors a site is receiving. Reports are generated and they get PAID by advertisers based upon this info. Bots RARELY grab anything but content. If you go to a webpage with images embedded in it, your web browser individually requests (most of the time barring cached data) each image. Since bots don't tend to request this graphical "fluff" intended for hyoomans, owners of the site notice an increase in site traffic and resource drains and a decrease in "ad impressions" when a bot "isn't polite". Yes, I do realize that some make revenue in other ways, but bots can use up resources faster than humans can regardless. With people your traffic usually scales slowly up or down. You can add or remove hardware to deal with the demand. Sometimes when a bot hits your webserver it is such a huge spike in requests for data it kills the server. Then all the legitimate users get cranky. Or, a more minor form is that it makes the s e r v e r sllluuuugggggiiish.
Anywhoo... Thats my $1.25 on the matter. Cheers. - Sartian
I posted earlier about it, figured I'd provide the link to my previous post for you to find more info...
There's a good chance that was the chance that was the Cyberlink. (www.brainfingers.com) The inventor, Andrew Junker, worked in the armed services and it was how I first discovered the technology myself. I saw a pilot in a simulator with a headband that said "Cyberlink" in a documentary about the future of avionics. Approximately 2.3 seconds later I was on the 'Net looking for the device so I could have one. :)
The technology itself is something that was discovered years ago but it isn't until recently that advances have made the cost involved low enough to have visiblity for the average consumer. I am a software engineer working with Andrew Junker, the creator of the Cyberlink, on just such technology. The device allows me to sit in front of my computer, without the need to literally lift a finger, and move the mouse cursor around and click and open applications and such. You wear a headband with three (3) eletrodes that rest on your forehead that pick up EEG, EOG and EMG signals for analysis and control. The website itself is a little dated since we're adding new features that we have yet to post. Being a cross-platform developer I am rewriting the API to be able to compile on nearly any environment. Even my Palm Pilot. ;P The people that have already benefitted from this technology greatly are those that have had a serious spinal injury or something that leaves them paralyzed and unable to interact with others in a normal way. Some have learned how to use the Cyberlink well enough to type messages to their family after years of silence in a vegetative state. Pretty cool stuff. ;P *chuckle* It has a couple ways to be used and most people can pick up basic control with the unit within a few minutes. Since I suffer from tendonitis I'd also interested in the technology as a way to allow my wrists to recover from the injury. Its cool technology and it is available now... If interested, check it out at www.brainfingers.com.. The website even has a message board where people discuss some of the basics about the device and the technology involved. If you have any questions about what sorts of things the development API allows you to do, you can drop me an email at cyberlink_at_lifepod_dot_com. Cheers. :)
Michael