Brain/Computer Gaming Interface Coming in 2008

An anonymous reader writes "Emotiv Systems today unveiled a brain/computer interface system with a helmet and software applications at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The Project Epoc system can move objects based on a gamer's thoughts, reflect facial expressions, and respond to the excitement or calm the gamer mentally exerts, the company said....While Emotiv is not yet ready to announce any partnerships, [they] did say the product will be coming to market in 2008."

Well.

Ive seen studies on invasive technology on brain-digital connection, and it works the best, UNLESS it gets infected (often).

Infection in the brain is bad.

Well, how do they plan to hook up the player? Some helmet might work if the user shaves their head..

It'll probably work as well as the Phantom Console (Vaporware).

Re:Well.

RTFA. This is not an invasive technology. Its a helmet.

Re:Well.

What data can you gather from a helmet most likely sitting on hair? Guess what.. you dont get much at all.

Well, its EEG. EEG is a reflection of aggregate neural activity and can be recorded quite easily at the skull. Lab research on controling cursors and whatnot has been done before with EEG, but it is usually pretty crude control that one can gain even after extensive practice. As TFA says, "Anecdotally, the system seems to work best with children and others open to believing in their capability, according to Breen." In other words, the gullible tend to believe they are actually controlling things in the game.

Re:Well.

EEG is a reflection of aggregate neural activity and can be recorded quite easily at the skull...the system seems to work best with children and others open to believing in their capability

I guess you could say it works better with an "open mind."

Jokes aside, this seems like learning to control a body part. Children are constantly refining their internal models of motion as they grow and gain dexterity, so it makes sense that they would learn more quickly than an adult. People who suffer from nerve damage usually recover more quickly and more completely if they have self confidence. It's not mind-over-matter exactly, but those who believe they will fail likely will.

Re:Well.

only an idiot would undergo an invasive surgery to play a videogame

This is /. You have people here who would have the surgery just to control a mouse. Imagine two hand free slideshow viewing -- not just timed, but you select the pictures and still have both hands free. That's gotta play well here. And then there's hands free Tux Racer. That will rock.

Where do I sign up??

Danger!

...respond to the excitement or calm the gamer mentally exerts...

I can't wait for an 'adult' game to kill someone with a feedback loop of excitement and stimulation. That would be awesome.

Re:Danger!

Judging from some of the people I've met while gaming online I'd say many would be ineligable for anything that required connecting to a brain.

Been there

I remember a freind who had a Sega Genesis? controller that slipped on your index finger and supposedly moved by thought. What turned out was it was really good at knowing which way you are moving your finger.

Sorry, no links. The only thing I remember about it, it was around 1995-96 and I think I saw an add in gamepro for it.

nw?

Ive saw this on TV 12 years ago. Back then it was VERY slow moving something with your thoughts. Even if it is faster with out physical feedback how accurate can it be? I doubt your going to be racking up the headshots with this.

Sounds great..

I'll make sure to get one when they're released so I can play Duke Nukem Forever :)

2005

If brain implant of microchips [wired.com] can do it in 2005, I'm sure it's trival with a helmet in 2007.

Now

Now when you say you cant get a game out of your mind, you'll be right!

marketing plan

Emotiv Systems plans to target the Chinese pigeon [slashdot.org] market first, as many of the birds have already had the necessary equipment jammed through their craniums.

Release titles include "GTA: Bread Crust", "Microsoft Flight Simulator 2007: Parked Lexus Alley", and of course the much anticipated "The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Hideous Chinese Biolab Bay".

Oh man

Let's do this reverse. The computer working the brain. We'll all turn into MS Bob. But at least with this I can learn perl in my sleep.

Do I need to get an adapter for my USB bio-port?

Sure beats an ergonomic mouse. But does this mean that I have to get an adapter for my USB bioport?

Bio-ports were made fashionable by the Cronenberg film Existenz btw.

"In the near-future, "eXistenZ" is the newest and greatest gaming experience from designer Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh). She meets Ted Pikul (Jude Law), a novice security guard, at a public preview of the new game. eXistenZ is part of an organic gaming system, the main console of which - the MetaFlesh Game-Pod (!) - is a living organism genetically engineered from fertilized amphibian eggs stuffed with synthetic DNA. Players plug directly into the system via their 'bioport' - a fashionable addition to the base of one's spine to enable full sensory interaction with the MetaFlesh system - and the human body is used as the power source for the game pod. When fanatics burst into the preview test and attempt to kill Geller, Pikul is forced into action and escapes with the game designer - setting up a cat-and-mouse chase between the world-famous Geller and her would-be assassins. Whilst on the run, Geller convinces Pikul to have the operation to implant a bioport so that he too can experience the cutting edge of gaming technology. The two of them enter into the game world of eXistenZ where murder and intrigue abound and the boundaries of reality and fantasy are almost impossible to perceive. As they spend more and more time in the system, becoming embroiled in a complex and dangerous game plot, their bodies in the real world are exposed to the forces of the anti-eXistenZalists."

http://www.dso.co.uk/fr0083.htm [dso.co.uk]

Project Epoc

brings mind control to games

Sounds scary, doesn't it?

Sweet

I love the skullcap glove. It's so bad!

the big question that needs to be answered....

... will this work through my tinfoil hat?

Sorry

All my money is tied up in 3d goggles, flying cars and cryogenics.

But thanks for playing and please accept this lovely home version of our game as a parting gift.

More info and a picture

Here is their homepage: http://www.emotiv.com/ [emotiv.com]

Looks like they're looking for people to test their brain control devices on...
http://www.gumtree.com.au/sydney/07/8397907.html [gumtree.com.au]

Biofeedback

I didn't RTFA (this is /. after all) but it sounds a lot like the already existing technology of biofeedback. There's been a "game" out for a while called Journey to Wild Divine [wilddivine.com] that responds to the player's biological processes (heart rate, etc.) Supposedly, after extended usage, the player can actually learn to control those processes with the mind and therefore control the game.

You will be assimilated

I for one welcome our Borg Overlords. Resistance is futile.

3..2..1...

vague pr0n use ideas begin now!

TLF

I already have a brain-computer interface

They are called my hands, and they work very well, thank you.

Sounds good to me

I've been using a system called bio-feedback that interfaces with the brain through a series of very small electrodes, sometimes as few as 3 (one on the back of each earlobe, and one on either of the hemispheres). It works by displaying your brainwaves in a way which the brain finds easy to understand, and forcing you to enter a certain frame of mind to control the program. This means the treatment is often done in the form of games. The games the treatment uses are usually very simple (for example, one called Space Race forces the user to relax and to concentrate in order to cause one spaceship to speed up and two others to slow down), but with enough electrodes in the right places, and with an (indeterminate to someone outside of the industry by myself, and probably varying from person to person) amount of training, I can see this coming to fruition in the near future. I really don't know whether 2008 is a realistic date, but it is coming, and sooner than a lot of you think. On a related note, the laptop in my therapist's office required that the electrodes enter a box, which output to a parallel connection, which they had to send to a parallel/serial adapter, then to a serial/USB adapter. Needless to say, it took me a while to trace the amalgam of cords sitting on that desk.

About time!

I remember DOS games like Red Storm Rising that came with a keyboard overlay because you needed that many different commands. Heck, imagine how much easier it would've been to play games like System Shock if you could've issued commands by thought.

Of course, this could be a problem in The Sims. I can see my wife accidentally screwing up in the game because she briefly thought about cooking dinner or playing with the dog. Of course, if her sims kept accidentally getting it on, then I would have a good signal she was in the mood!

Quick--Contact Wesley Crusher!

Those damn aliens are trying to take over humankind again using The Game [startrek.com]!

Sounds like eXistenZ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EXistenZ [wikipedia.org]
It is a odd movie.

This will not work.

What is one of the most important factors in judging the quality of an input device?

The correlation between the users intent, and what actually happens.

If a device cannot do what the user intends at an optimal level, then it is a poor input device, and will be doomed to fail.

At this point in time, we don't have the technology to get a correlation between intent and what happens high enough to use consistently as an input device. When we do, it still will be a long way from the sort of complex controls required in the majority of modern games.

 

Not Only For Games

With sufficiently precise brain wave monitoring it should be possible to detect very complex patterns. At the same time the user would 'learn' how to create certain patterns, just like how any person learns how to move their arms or blink. Eventually you could make your avatar run and jump without feeling a twitch in your legs - your brain knows what patterns are needed to make your avatar take actions.

I can imagine this being useful for other things than games in the long run. This, of course, would be the more obvious Neuromancer style future where your control over the computer is almost entirely brain based. Once again, with sufficient resolution in a device like this one you could probably type at the speed you can think. You would be able to give 'voice commands' faster than you can talk. Need to view another object on your screen? Just think about it.

The ramifications would be enormous. What if people could write a book in half the time simply because they were no longer constantly distracted by their own typing? Even further into the future when there is some kind of feedback device, maybe you would be able to 'feel' your way around data, rapidly moving through it at the speed of your thoughts. Perhaps you would ultimately be able to search faster and better than Google.

Medical Applications Barely Mentioned

The "wow" factor for the use of this technology by healthy people to play video games can't be denied (if, in fact, the device works as it says it does). My huge question about this, though, is why if the technology is so good, it hasn't been implemented to help people with neurological abnormalities better control the world around them. I'm sure many a quadriplegic would be ecstatic about the opportunity to control their wheelchair or utilize a mechanical arm to help feed themselves using a helmet and the "power of thought." Instead, it seems like the first application being touted is for video game control? That doesn't make much sense to me - I would think the medical market would be where the money is at AND the population most likely to adopt such a new technology without it having to be 100% accurate all the time.

It makes me wonder if this is just a lot of hot air to get a company's name thrown around in places like Slashdot. Yay! Control video games with your brain! Then why is it researchers at the National Institutes of Health as recently as two years ago still couldn't get a similar technology to work with a level of accuracy greater than that of random chance just to tell whether a person was going to move their right or left arm before the motion actually took place? Oh, and those analyses were done with EEG, which involves the use of a skullcap with 30+ electrical leads stuck directly to a person's scalp with a special electro-conductive gel. I'm sure if that's required to make this "helmet" work, it probably won't go over too well since setting up a clinical EEG skullcap takes upwards of 10 minutes and can be rather painful, depending on how much hair a person has.

Saw this 15+ years ago

On a TV show from the early 90's called "Beyond 2000" there was an episode that showed a lady hooked up to electrodes, controlling a computer character in a 3D environment by thought. I have often wondered where that technology had gone. With as fast as computer technology moves I thought it would have been here well before 15 years. I have Googled for info on that epidsode but can't find any.

No way. Duke Nukem Forever 2008...

No way this is even mildly accurate. It was all-but a breakthrough to do this with exposed brains and ECOG. The Moran lab at Washington University gets 2-3 degrees of freedom from that.

No way they're getting more than 2 even after *long* training periods from EEG without using exotic (and accordingly expensive) components.

Metaverse has arrived

Combine this with the Sony's announcement today that PS3 will have a persistent online "street" where everyone will have an avatar and their own apartment, and it's basically the metaverse. Sweet.

Just in time for

StarCraft 2. Oh to be one with Kerrigan's Swarm again...

Real Deal

These guys are the real deal. I witnessed a prototype demo back in early 2006. In addition to developing an input device, they've also been using the thing to test video games under development: test where players are bored, surprised, learning, etc. Its really exciting stuff!

Proof of Suckage

Excuse the troll-like subject title above, but if a neuro interface that could actually reflect precise movements and commands had been invented, the company would be running straight to the vastly more lucrative military market long before taking a look at home consoles.

The fact that its coming straight to home consoles suggests that hype and hope will be the products primary market drivers.

My two cents.

Been there, done that....

I made a "brainwave joystick" as part of my graduate research in neuro-engineering. http://www.picobay.com/projects/2006/05/controllin g-video-game-with-brain.html [picobay.com] This is not new technology... it's been around for about twenty years now, but about every year or so CNN reports on it like it was just invented yesterday. It does have a high "gee-whiz" factor, but the reality is that the error rate is very high. There are thousands of neuroscientists working on brain computer interfacing at any given moment. What makes you think the first breakthrough is going to be for gaming? A more noble cause is to allow the paralyzed to control wheelchairs with mere thought and that hasn't happened yet (even an error rate of 5% is too high). Systems that are a little more accurate involve implanting electrodes in the brain. Unfortunately, scar tissue slowly surrounds the electrodes and the signals become weaker and weaker. Eventually after about 1 or 2 years the electrodes have to be surgically removed and placed in another location (and the patient has to be re-trained). So despite what the latest "future show" on the Discovery Channel may say, we are still a loooong way off from driving our cars with brain waves.

In other news..

... Google orders 100,000 units in order to monitor employees thoughts.

The company responded with a statement announcing that the reason was to make sure they were not doing or thinking evil.

I am

So buying one when they come out. I really don't care what the cost. I've been wanting one of these for years to play my games.

Breen?

FTFA: "[...] according to Breen."

What? No one is concerned that we have a Mr. Breen in charge of research? Are they sponsored by a company called Black Mesa by any chance?

Its only the beginning ...

Good, but i think about MANY different things

while i am gaming. What if the interface picks up a strong one of those thoughts and messes up my game ?

Grump

It would better if they would work on perfecting the brain/mouth interface.

This is not new

It's called "biofeedback"

Veritech Pilot

The simple term for this technology is Psionics. Avionics is electronics concerning aviation, psionics is mind/machine interface. D&D got it wrong. What they can Psionics should be called Psychogenics. Or we could call it Protoculture. Hehe.

Re:Obligatory...

Obligatory

Re:Legit devices shouldn't require magical thinkin

Maybe the kids have thinner skulls so the signals can get through more easily.

Re:Legit devices shouldn't require magical thinkin

I guess at the end of the day, most adults have a firm grasp of the laws of physics, It's easier to say to a child "You can move a cup with your mind!" and have the child believe and try doing it, than saying it to an adult and not having them laughing at you because they know it's physically not possible.