GDC 2008 – Emotiv Head Set
Interesting piece of hardware here. A headset that can detect various changes in the EEG of a person’s brainwaves: Emotiv Systems‘ EmotivEPOC.
Apparently there are common EEG signals that are preprogrammed into the software that allow recognizing of traits such as enjoyment or frustration. The software also allows training of specific EEG patterns to match particular actions (such as levitating an object).
They had a booth set up where you could try out the preprogrammed actions as well as the trained actions. I was able to train a few actions and try them out together. The device was capable in detecting when I was thinking one action as opposed to another, but became confused if I trained the same action with multiple different thoughts. It appears to be key to think the same thought every time training an action. This makes perfect sense.
A very cool tech demo. They said that the device is not intended to be a main input device, but is intended to be supplementary. So, you wouldn’t use this as the main way to control a game or computer, but instead give the software additional input — perhaps about your reactions to certain events, or how frustrated you are.
[retroposted on 5/25/2008]
Tags: brain control, emotic, gdc, gdc2008, input, io