Thursday, May 10, 2007

May the Farce be with You!

Picked up from Yahoo! News, and here, there is a company called NeuroSky in Silicon Valley, which aims to bring 'force-like' jedi powers to gamers. Just strap on the a single, dry electrode and voila! Awesome neural control! Strangely enough, the pictures on the website place the electrode right on the forehead. Let's see - when I concentrate, I tend to squint or furrow my brow. That contracts my occipitofrontalis muscle, right below the electrode, and results in a signal roughly 1000x's the strength of the EEG, and across all frequencies used by EEG. At the same time, I might clench my jaw, which would activate about 4 other large facial muscle groups.
Call me skeptical, but a single high impedance surface electrode ain't gonna tell you too much. Now, using the EMG signal isn't too bad of an idea if it still gives you some idea of the facial expression, but I doubt the product would have the same allure.

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