Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Virtual Smart Home Controlled By Your Thoughts

Apply directly to the forehead.

If you've ever wanted to swap sweat with a partial alopecian, you've never had a better opportunity than visiting this test booth at the CeBIT communications conference going on in Hanover.

It may not look like it, but the fella at the left is controlling the computer game...with his mind.

That little band around his forehead isn't some CosPlay garment. It's a USB powered Neural Impulse Actuator. Like the interface described in earlier Convergence posts, this little device, predicted to be on the market in one form or another by Xmas '08, uses brainwaves to control mouse arrows, avatars, and other objects on the screen.

via TheblanketStatement

Related story:
Virtual Smart Home Controlled By Your Thoughts

Light switches, TV remote controls and even house keys could become a thing of the past thanks to brain-computer interface (BCI) technology being developed in Europe that lets users perform everyday tasks with thoughts alone.

The technology, which was demonstrated at CeBIT in Hannover in March, provides an innovative way of controlling the interconnected electronic devices that will populate the smart homes of the future, granting increased autonomy to people with physical disabilities as well as pleasing TV channel-surfing couch potatoes.

“The BCI lets people turn on lights, change channels on the TV or open doors just by thinking about it,” explains Christoph Guger, the CEO of Austrian medical engineering company g.tec that developed the application. ...

Electroencephalogram (EEG) equipment is used to monitor electrical activity in a user’s brain via electrodes attached to their scalp. After a period of training, the system learns to identify the distinctive patterns of neuronal activity produced when they imagine walking forwards, flicking on a light switch or turning up the radio ...

via Virtual Smart Home Controlled By Your Thoughts.

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