WIN A PAIR OF GOOGLE GLASSES!*

This is for real people. To enter the draw, simply like and share this post with the following comment:

"These glasses will go great with my summer dress!" 

The winner will be the person with the highest amount of combined likes and shares on their post by 12PM Monday the 13th of May.

To enter, you must take a screen shot of your post and email into cforbes.imba2013@student.ie.edu.
Submissions received after 12PM Monday the 13th of May will not be accepted.

Good luck!

*Glasses to be delivered in time for Christmas Day, 2016

Brain computer interfaces to be mainstream by 2015

Google glasses are SO 2013! Forget nodding your head and blinking to control media in your eyes. By 2015, brain computer interfaces (BCIs) will be so widely used that a variety of apps will be available for your to control with your mind. We talked about Samsung's mind-tab a while back, but the problem with that was that you need to buy the BCI to use with it. Although it seems odd today that we'll all end up doing that, companies like Interaxon and Neurowear are developing stylish versions for us to wear in the everyday. But don't take our word for it; check out what the The New York Times has to say about the latest disruptive technology.

Brain-Controlled Arm in the White House

Brain-Controlled Arm in the White House

Starting this blog, I realize the brain-controlled devices are not an imaginative sci-fi gadgets anymore but something technologically achievable and economically affordable. At the annual White House Science Fair, a 17-year-old boy introduced his creation: a mind-controlled prosthetic arm (see the link below).

http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/22/3-awesome-and-inspiring-inventions-from-the-white-house-science-fair/

The arm is controlled by his concentration (a pattern of brain wave) and eye blinks, moves smoothly, and shakes hands with him.

Furthermore, he sells it for $250, thanks to the low-cost modelling by a 3D printer; it's a collaboration of two cutting-edge technologies. So far the product appearance is rough and there are many rooms to be sophisticated, in my opinion. But no doubt the future is on this way!

BIG. NEWS.

Samsung is officially working on a system that allows you to control a tablet with your brain. It works by focusing on repetitive visual patterns.

This means that developing brain-controlled applications will become a scalable, investable business in no time. Which applications would you like to run hands free? Evernote? Spotify? Twitter? Google Maps? YouTube? Something else? Tell me!

PS: Check out the demo via the link below. The music app is kinda slow, but if you want to tell someone you need a change of clothes (perhaps as a result of hands free browsing...) it's as easy as ABC!

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/513861/samsung-demos-a-tablet-controlled-by-your-brain/

Open Your Heart

Searching for something to write about in this week’s blog, I encountered an interesting story.

Caleb Forbes, our talented group mate (who is clearly very much into Human-Computer Interface), is taking part in a competition run by BusinessBecause website, asking MBA students around the world to predict how the world will look like when they retire, and how it is going to change.

Caleb, obviously a top finalist in the competition, predicts that in a couple of decades we will be able to communicate with each other and control the physical world around us through heart-to-heart communication, rather than face to face, phone to phone, or even brain-to-brain communication!

If true, do you think this might make our connections with others more intimate and sincere? Will this change who we are and help us change the world into a better place?

We will have to wait and see…

Click here to check out the article!

Think your password!

Do you know this situation...You are at the ATM on a crowded street and you are afraid, that someone can see you typing your PIN?

This can be history in a couple of years! In the future you can just THINK your password - and with the help of a common EEG headset and a piece of software you will get access to your bank account, mail account etc.

Professor John Chuang (Source: http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu)

A team from UC Berkeley School of Information released an interesting paper about this. Within a defined threshold, they were ably to reduce the error rate to 1%. This is pretty amazing.

So when we project this research in the future, where EEG sensors are much smaller and integrated into our daily life, this can be a big benefit regarding convenience and security while authentication processes.

But together with every invention in the area of security, there is also a way to manipulate it. You will find some interesting points about "hacking your mind" in the next days here.

Stay tuned!

PUI - a new gateway to control your computer!

Perceptual User Interface (PUI) is one kind of technology that allows user to interact with computer without using other forms of aids such as keyboard and mouse. It is extremely useful for people have physical difficulties to use computers and it has become a very popular subject in computing department in most of universities.

When I was doing my undergraduate, I have studied a course called computer vision. Computer vision is a field that includes methods for acquiring, processing, analysing, and understanding images and, in general, high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical or symbolic information[1].

During the course, we were required to develop a graphical user interface that would allows user interact with the system by pointing with their finger.  Basically, we set up a camera and record the movement of our fingers, the camera was connecting with computer so it was sending the live video to the computer at the same time. What the program does is tracing the tip of the finger (please see the picture below, there is a red arrow at the tip of the finger on the right window) when the finger is moving in the video simultaneously. This program is very helpful for disabled people that cannot use the keyboard or mouse. For example, if a disabled person wants to tell computer to open a website, he/she can just by pointing his/her finger to a specific point which we can pre-define that point is ‘internet’ browser point, so the computer can open web browser automatically.  It does sounds similar to iphone, but the difference is to use Iphone’s touch screen, the user will need to touch the screen physically. However, the program I developed does not even need the user to touch the screen at all. This is much cooler as you can control your computer remotely without any physical touch!

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_vision