Neurobot » Moving Mountains With the Brain, Not a Joystick

12
Jun
Moving Mountains With the Brain, Not a Joystick

STILL using a mouse, keyboard, joystick or motion sensor to control the action in a video game? It may be time to try brain power instead.
By ANNE EISENBERG
Published: NY Times, June 8, 2008
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
A new headset system picks up electrical activity from the brain, as well as from facial muscles and other spots, and translates it into on-screen commands. This lets players vanquish villains not with a click, but with a thought.
Put on the headset, made by Emotiv Systems in San Francisco, and when a giant boulder blocks the path in a game you are playing, you can levitate it — not by something as crude as a keystroke, but just by concentrating on raising it, said Tan Le, Emotiv’s president. The headset captures electrical signals when you concentrate; then the computer processes these signals and pairs a screen action with them, like lifting a stone or repairing a falling bridge.

model to be sold to consumers
The headset is the consumer cousin of brain-computer interfaces developed in research labs and used, for example, by monkeys who manipulate prosthetic arms with thoughts. The monkeys’ intentions are detected by sensors, translated into machine language and used to move the arm. In general, some interfaces use sensors implanted directly in the brain; others use electrode-studded caps.
Read the whole article at NY Times, here.