A few hours ago TED published a talk about a headset that can read your brainwaves and interpret them. At first I was VERY skeptical about the headset, but they've brought it on camera and showed a demonstration using a blank profile (everyone thinks a bit differently, and a profile has to be created for each user). The user was faced with a box and he has the job to move it around in space. It took 8 seconds for the system to learn each "command" the user was about to do. They first demonstrated pulling the box towards the screen and then a more difficult task of vanishing the box. They said this was more challenging because the user has no real life reference to imagine a box fading away.
After the demonstration ended, they showed a video with possible applications some of which where just awesome: levitating objects in games, changing game colors to fit your mood and enhance the experience, controlling your wheelchair and some simple applications like turning off the lights and closing the curtains.
This technology seems to be more like a proof of concept than a product. It works on a small number of commands, but as the pool grows it's bound to get buggy just like voice recognition does. Moreover, this project should be used as a centralized control system so that you can use it's input for basically any device in you own (computer, air conditioning, TV, lights, car, gaming consoles...).
If we already have such devices around it makes one wonder what will come out of the labs in 10 years time. I'll leave you with the video to enjoy the full talk.
I saw the talk on ted a few days ago and yes it is amazing and it makes you wonder what will be next,but I'm wondering how come new technologies known for a few years don't get to be developed to their full extent.
ReplyDeleteI believe it's a business and a sales thing or maybe i'm just not well informed.
anyhow ...it's an interesting project :)