Being able to interact with the world in a different way through touch and audible gestures feels like you’ve been catapulted into a futuristic, science-fiction movie. But what if there was a way to remove the limitations associated with having to bark out voice commands in public and use nothing more than a little brainpower to get things done with Glass? The future is here thanks to London-based company This Place and its new Glass compatible technology.
The company behind the innovation has just released its MindRDR app; an open-source offering that basically offers the user a very limited, but very impressive set of superhero powers. The MindRDR app may be an impressive piece of software, but in this instance it’s effectively rendered useless without the presence of the EEG biosensor headset that is developed and provided by Neurosky. The whole purpose of This Place’s software is to bridge the gap between the EEG biosensor and the Glass headset to allow for very limited mind-controlling capabilities.
The app in its current form is extremely limited in what it can achieve. But that shouldn’t take away from how impressive this breakthrough actually is. The app is intelligent enough to read and analyze brainwaves that are provided by the Neurosky biosensor and turn them into actual executable commands that are then distributed to the Glass headset to act upon. The capabilities of MindRDR are currently limited to capturing a stealth photo and uploading the image to a connected Facebook or Twitter account. Still, taking a photo and interacting with social media purely through thought is still impressive, if a little terrifying.
The whole process works by overlaying a thin white line on the Google Glass screen when the app is installed. The concentration levels of the wearer control when the action is executed. The process is then repeated again to invoke the uploading aspect. This may seem like nothing more than a showcase gimmick with very little benefit going forward, but in actual fact, this type of technology could have an untold amount of uses for new and future Glass owners with function impairing diseases and disabilities.
What do you make of all this? Do you think this should be the standard way to control Glass going forward?
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