Yes­ter­day I dis­cov­ered some­thing very inter­est­ing. An enter­prise called Emo­tiv Sys­tems intro­duced some kinda hel­met that allows gamers to con­trol games with their mind. Thus, it’s safe to call it a brain/computer inter­face. The sys­tem is called Project Epoc and it can move objects based on gamer’s thoughts, reflect facial expres­sions, and respond to the excite­ment or calm the user men­tally exerts. The hel­met con­tains lots of sen­sors which pick up elec­tric sig­nals in the brain. The soft­ware part ana­lyzes the sig­nals and wire­lessly relays them to a receiver which is plugged into the USB port of a game con­sole or PC.

The devel­op­ers all share the same vision: to trans­form the way humans inter­act with machines. They’re going to develop this tech­nol­ogy for use in other indus­tries too, includ­ing med­i­cine, secu­rity, mar­ket research, and inter­ac­tive tele­vi­sion. Cur­rently, the hel­met on dis­play at GDC is a pro­to­type and some video footage indi­cates that it takes a high level of con­cen­tra­tion to actu­ally make things hap­pen. Nonethe­less, it’s an impor­tant step into the right direc­tion: cre­at­ing a highly effi­cient inter­face between humans and machines. Accord­ing to Emo­tiv Sys­tems we’re going to see the device on the mar­ket in 2008.

Pretty cool stuff, isn’t it? Fright­en­ing too.