mind control

Are the deepest secrets of your mind safe? Could thieves trick you into revealing your bank card PIN or computer passwords just by thinking about them?

Theoretically, it could happen.

Ivan Martinovic of the University of Oxford and colleagues at the University of Geneva and University of California at Berkeley describe research into that question in a paper entitled "On the Feasibility of Side-Channel Attacks With Brain-Computer Interfaces" presented earlier this month at the 21st USENIX Security Symposium.

The research was inspired by the growing number of games and other mind apps available for low-cost consumer EEG devices such as Emotiv's EPOC headset, which lets users interact with computers using their thoughts alone. … Read more

This is the week that the torture test really comes into its own, I think. We decided to toughen up and test the brand-new 11-inch Apple MacBook Air. Yeah, I know. Yikes. But I really want to test portable devices, and the Air is the epitome of portable, is it not?

We're down to a good rhythm with heat, cold, dropping, and water, and we're really trying to figure out how to make the wild card tests true to life. So, when three or four viewers tweeted me and told me they had put their MacBook Airs on … Read more

By implanting a 96-electrode sensor the size of a baby aspirin onto the surface of their brains, researchers have enabled two quadriplegic participants to use their thoughts alone to perform tasks with two types of robotic arms.

The BrainGate implant -- and the resulting Jedi mind tricks -- may be sort of anxiety-producing to some. But the smile on the face of the woman who hadn't been able to serve herself coffee in 15 years put a fine point on the progress the technology is affording.

"One of our participants was able to do something that, when all … Read more

The guys at Chaotic Moon are on a roll. Literally.

First, they wowed CES with their Board of Awesomeness, a Microsoft Kinect-powered skateboard that the rider controls with various gestures. They parlayed that into a shopping cart that can follow you around a grocery store, scan your groceries, and possibly even check you out automatically. But all that was just January's work.

These days, the Austin-based Chaotic Moon Lab--the R&D arm of the larger studio--has taken the same skateboard I rode in Las Vegas in January and made a few X-Men-style modifications. Now it's powered by your mind.

The obviously named Board of Imagination integrates a neuroheadset from a company called Emotiv, with a Samsung tablet running Windows 8, which is in turn connected to the skateboard's motor. The headset translates thought into electrical circuitry that's routed through the tablet, into the motor, and powers the board. Simply put, you think--it goes. … Read more

This week, Donald and Eric discuss the future of mind-controlled televisions, and an iPad joystick that looks like Atari's vision of the future from the '80s. The horror of the MIDI accordion is revealed for what it is. And in Geek News, Donald and Eric sum up the unforgivable digital vandalism George Lucas has wrought on his masterpiece.

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China-based Haier is showcasing an interesting mind control technology for TVs at the ongoing IFA trade show in Berlin. The Brain Wave resembles a headset, with an extension placed peculiarly on the user's forehead to control a TV's volume and change channels with thoughts alone. The firm demonstrated its prototype with a game that involves blowing up barrels with your mind. Even if Haier gets the system to market for TVs, we're betting it won't be easy to convince most consumers to don the bulky headset in its present form.

Having said that, we would love to see the Brain Wave miniaturized and made more comfortable, or possibly integrated into regular 3D glasses. Until then, there are other, less intrusive alternatives to remote controls ranging from voice recognition to hand gestures.

(Source: Crave Asia via Engadget) … Read more

Researchers are ready to advance their tests of a novel brain-computer interface (BCI) from animals to human subjects, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency just granted them more than $6 million over the next three years to get those human clinical trials under way.

Ongoing research out of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and the University of Pittsburgh has already demonstrated that the team's tiny 10x10 array of electrodes implanted on the surface of a monkey's brain can process activity from individual neurons to guide a robotic arm through such simple tasks as turning doorknobs and … Read more

Science is moving faster than you are. Think about it. No, really think about it.

And when you do, see if you can make your brain waves move some of the icons on your iPhone or iPad. No can do? Oh, yes you can.

At least that is the claim of the frightfully ambitious people who have created the XWave. This is not some mysterious means by which everyone with an iPad is suddenly made to raise their arms in the air and pretend they are at a World Cup soccer game. No, this is a product that claims to allow you to control your Apple gadget with the innermost innards of your thought process.

The XWave is not a pretty device. It makes users look like they are part of a very quirky lobotomy experiment in 24-hour telemarketing. Yet its claims are beautiful. PLX Devices, the company which was left to its own devices to come up with this freaky little thing, claims on its Web site that "XWave allows you to control your mind and the world around it."

A heady assertion indeed for something that clips onto your head and into your iPad, iPhone, or even iPod. But not yet your iBall.

… Read more

As a tech blogger who gets to see cool stuff daily, I may be a bit jaded. On Monday, my editor asked if I felt like writing about a mind-controlled networked miniature spy robot and my initial reaction was "meh." But then I thought about what she'd just typed and it hit me that it's a mind-controlled networked miniature spy robot. Of course I felt like writing about it!

It's a homemade bash using WowWee's Rovio Wi-Fi robotic Web camera and Emotiv Systems' EPOC gaming headset, which lets players manipulate a game environment with … Read more