Google Glass has made a name for itself (somewhat
infamously) as head-mounted
hardware that you can control with your voice and a sliding finger.
Now, a team based out of interactive studio
This Place,
in London, is launching a new app that it hopes will kickstart an even
more seamless way of interacting with the device: with the power of your
mind.
MindRDR, as the app is called, links up Google Glass with another piece of head-mounted hardware, the
Neurosky EEG biosensor, to create a communication loop.
The Neurosky biosensor picks up on brainwaves that correlate to your
ability to focus. The app then translates these brainwaves into a meter
reading that gets superimposed on the camera view in Google Glass. As
you “focus” more with your mind, the meter goes up, and the app takes a
photograph of what you are seeing in front of you. Focus some more, and
the meter goes up again and the photo gets posted to Twitter.
It’s an early, and somewhat primitive vision of how your mind can control Glass.
Yes, there are devices out there that have even more sensors on them,
although that can start to get very expensive (the Neurosky retails for
£71 in the UK, while Google Glass costs £1,000 and the app is free).
And to be honest, the current hook-up is pretty primitive, too. When I
arrived for a demonstration earlier today, one of This Place’s account
managers was cooling Glass down under the air conditioner.
And that’s before you start to put on two different bits of headgear. It can be a little clumsy.
But all this isn’t the point: the idea here is that this is a minimum
viable product, a first step that can be developed further — for
example, to create applications to “train” people to concentrate better,
or to play games, maybe to help suggest places to get a coffee when
your sensor picks up that you’re tired, or for medical applications, for
example for people with mobility problems.
And potentially, you could build out the basic concept with more,
lighter and easier to use sensors. This Place says that among those who
have taken an interest are Stephen Hawking, the famous physicist who is
nearly paralysed because of a progressive motor neuron disease.
To that end, while This Place continuing its own development, it has also
put the code up on GitHub for others to use it and expand on it as well.
Visiting This Place earlier today for a demonstration,
Chloe Kirton, This Place’s creative director who had originally
conceived of MindRDR, told me that the idea is somewhat related to the
kind of work her colleagues do every day for paying clients.
(MindRDR, to be clear, is not a paid project and was not
developed for any client; rather it’s in the vein of other London-based
creative agencies like UsTwo, where employees are encouraged to work on
creative projects that are completely outside of their day-to-day client
work.)
A typical project for This Place, she says, is working on
user experience and user interfaces for large Internet properties. “When
touchscreens first became mainstream it forced the tech industry to
really rethink the user experience,” she says. “Could this become the
basis of a new kind of user interface? Could the future be about an
interface that disappears altogether?”
Part of the interest, too, came out of Kirton’s awareness of the some of Google Glass’s shortcomings.
“We saw the problems,” she says. Speaking out loud to your
device is unnatural and could be downright awkward in some cases. And
the finger sliding and tapping is not great, either. “After a while your
arm gets tired,” she says. “You get Glass elbow. We wanted to think of
something that was natural and accessible for everyone.”
Google Glass, for all the
glasshole drawbacks,
has become a reference point that has inspired some interesting
applications and concepts for where wearable technology may take us in
the future. That’s included
ways to use Glass to pay for things, and how Glass can be
used by doctors
and other clinicians. Kirton says that MindRDR is so far the only app
that links up Google Glass with brainwave-reading technology.
