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.
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Jim
Wilson/The New York Times
Emotiv’s headset, demonstrated above, allows players to
manipulate objects in games with their thoughts |
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.
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.
For
humans, Emotiv plans to have its
noninvasive, wireless EPOC
headset ($299) on sale in time
for Christmas, Ms. Le said. With
16 sensors that lightly touch
the head, it uses a standard
technology,
electroencephalography, or EEG,
to pick up electrical signals
from the scalp’s surface and
convert them to actions that
control or enhance what happens
on screen.
To help players master the art
of moving on-screen objects
solely through concentration,
the headset will come bundled
with a game, set on a magical
mountain, that includes practice
exercises, said Geoffrey
Mackellar, Emotiv’s research and
development manager. “You clear
the mind,” he said, and then do
30 to 40 seconds of training, by
concentrating, for instance, on
visualizing a block lifting from
the earth. “On the first or
second attempt, you can lift it
at will.”
Other, harder challenges
follow. In constant feedback, he said, the machine learns more about
how users think just as users grow more skillful at concentrating.
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Jim
Wilson/The New York Times
The model to be sold to consumers |
Many game developers are
incorporating the EPOC’s biofeedback abilities into their
applications, Ms. Le said.
The system doesn’t just lift boulders. It can also detect some of a
player’s facial expressions and emotional responses: smile, frown or
wink, for instance, and an avatar on screen can do so, too. Grow
bored during a battle, and the system can detect ennui and supply a
few dragons, or change the music. The device tracks a total of about
30 responses.
A chip inside the headset collects the signals and sends them
wirelessly to a receiver plugged into a U.S.B. port of the computer,
where most of the processing occurs, Dr. Mackellar said.
The sleek Emotiv headset is a version of the EEG cap used for
decades to record brain electrical activity, said Nathan Fox, a
professor of human development at the University of Maryland.
“There can be as many as 256 electrodes at one time in a cap,” he
said. ‘The placement corresponds in some rough approximation to
brain areas that are underneath the scalp.”
Medical-grade EEG caps are used in research to eavesdrop on the
brain as it plans motion and to translate these plans, for example,
into cursor actions on a screen so paralyzed people can control a
computer to write messages.
The Emotiv headset, too, taps the power of the mind, as well as
using feedback from muscles, Dr. Mackellar said.
“We definitely read brain waves — no doubt about it — but we also
read other things,” he said. “In classical EEG, movements of the
face and muscles are regarded as noise. But we use some of it,
rather than discard it.”
Anton Nijholt, a professor of computer science at the University of
Twente in the Netherlands who does research on innovative interfaces
for games, looks forward to the extra means of interaction that EEG
headsets will provide. But he doesn’t think that all consumers will
be able to use them to raise mountains.
“Not all people are able to display the mental activity necessary to
move an object on a screen,” he said. “Some people may not be able
to imagine movement in a way that EEG can detect.”
So far, Dr. Mackellar said, all 200 testers of the headset had
indeed been able to move on-screen objects mentally.
ANOTHER headset, the Neural Impulse Actuator ($169), just released
by the OCZ Technology Group in Sunnyvale, Calif., has three sensors
in a headband that pick up electrical activity primarily from
muscles and convert it into commands, said Michael Schuette, vice
president for technology development. Players of shooting games, for
instance, may use eye movement to trigger a shot, shaving
milliseconds off of their response time and sparing their hands.
The exact source of the electrical activity the headset is picking
up may not be important, said Dr. Jonathan Wolpaw, chief of the
laboratory for nervous system disorders at the Wadsworth Center of
the New York State Department of Health in Albany. He uses EEG caps
as part of brain-computer interfaces for severely paralyzed people.
His systems record brain activity alone, but for a consumer game
device, a cap that picks up a mixture of brain and muscle activity
may be acceptable.
“In a lot of these commercial uses, people don’t care if the
activity is coming from the brain or forehead muscles,” he said. “It
doesn’t matter to them so long as they can play the game.”
Source: NYTimes
