Engineers design video game controller that can sense players' emotions (w/ video)
—Stanford engineers have developed what could be the next big thing in interactive gaming: handheld game controllers that measure the player's physiology and alter the gameplay to make it more engaging.
Sometimes, a dozen ravenous zombies just aren't exciting enough to hold a video gamer's interest. The next step in interactive gaming, however, could come in the form of a handheld game controller that gauges the player's brain activity and throws more zombies on the screen when it senses the player is bored.
The prototype controller was born from research conducted in the lab of Gregory Kovacs, a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford, in collaboration with Texas Instruments. The main area of research by grad students in Kovacs' lab involves developing practical ways of measuring physiological signals to determine how a person's bodily systems are functioning.
One such system of interest to Corey McCall, a doctoral candidate in Kovacs' lab, is the autonomic nervous system, the emotional part of the brain – the part that changes when you get excited or bored, happy or sad. This activity, in turn, influences your heart rate, respiration rate, temperature, perspiration and other key bodily processes. Measuring these outward signs offers a way of reverse engineering what's occurring in the brain.
(video at link)
http://phys.org/news/2014-04-video-game-players-emotions.html
Are you going to be "gamed?"
Well, when this comes online, yes. Obviously so.
—Stanford engineers have developed what could be the next big thing in interactive gaming: handheld game controllers that measure the player's physiology and alter the gameplay to make it more engaging.
Sometimes, a dozen ravenous zombies just aren't exciting enough to hold a video gamer's interest. The next step in interactive gaming, however, could come in the form of a handheld game controller that gauges the player's brain activity and throws more zombies on the screen when it senses the player is bored.
The prototype controller was born from research conducted in the lab of Gregory Kovacs, a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford, in collaboration with Texas Instruments. The main area of research by grad students in Kovacs' lab involves developing practical ways of measuring physiological signals to determine how a person's bodily systems are functioning.
One such system of interest to Corey McCall, a doctoral candidate in Kovacs' lab, is the autonomic nervous system, the emotional part of the brain – the part that changes when you get excited or bored, happy or sad. This activity, in turn, influences your heart rate, respiration rate, temperature, perspiration and other key bodily processes. Measuring these outward signs offers a way of reverse engineering what's occurring in the brain.
(video at link)
http://phys.org/news/2014-04-video-game-players-emotions.html
Are you going to be "gamed?"
Well, when this comes online, yes. Obviously so.
