I just saw a commercial for the
Mattel Mindflex today and I just got really excited about it so I had to look it up, it's conceptual at this point for controlling objects with your mind via electrical signals converted from brain waves, but they are making progress, and this $80 toy shows some promise
Here's a picture of it:
There's also a review and some videos of it at Engadget:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/09/video-mattel-mind-flex-hands-and-heads-on/ The mindflex is somewhat disappointing because of the dial required to move the ball in two directions There's also another review of it at CNET which shows a star wars mind control toy too
http://news.cnet.com/crave/?keyword=Mattel+MindflexI did find out that the consumer technology behind that had more goodies so this is even more interesting.
NeuroSky created a
NeuroSky Mindset here:
http://store.neurosky.com/products/mindset Actually it's $199.00 but they forgot the decimal point on the product page Here's a picture of it:
It's a software oriented headset for computer that allows you to visualize your brainwaves in an graphical user interface and a dynamic graphs and charts system, play a game called NeuroBoy where you can move objects with your mind and even set cars on
FIRE and there's a math trainer program that shows you where you could improve on arithmetic.
Brain Visualizer:
http://store.neurosky.com/products/brainwave-visualizerThe Adventures of NeuroBoy:
http://store.neurosky.com/products/the-adventures-of-neuroboy-bci-technology-demoMathTrainer:
http://store.neurosky.com/products/math-trainerThere's a few videos of it on youtube where the NeuroBoy game, miscallaneous demos, real life uses and even the Source engine
The source engine is used on the Half-Life 2 series of Valve and Gearbox Software games in case you don't know what that is show some nice abilities
Here are some example videos I found:
NeuroBoy car burning and throwing objects:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlJz1Dm16wQSpace Invaders:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CoQ5yz-dfcMoving a cart connected to a winch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR5sIMtgXEESource Engine moving objects:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQWBfCg91CUThere's also a free development kit for this here:
http://www.neurosky.com/mindset/devtools.htmlI definitely plan on getting this soon, because I want to see what I can do with it and I hope that homebrew developers find this and then port it to other systems, because this would be so awesome on some games, perhaps even on Wii or open source platforms like the GP2X and Pandora Portable, the Mindset seems to have a lot of gaming potential