OCZ Prepares Neural Impulse Actuator for Shipping

An anonymous reader writes "Technology review site Overclock3D has received word that OCZ Technology is putting their neural impulse actuator (NIA) into mass production for shipping next week. The device, aimed at gamers, works by reading biopotentials. 'These include activities of the brain, the autonomous nervous system and muscles — all of which are captured using embrace sensors located on the NIA's headband, amplified and sent to the PC via USB 2.0.' Users of the NIA will be able to control their in-game movements using only the power of mind. The device is priced at around $600USD"

DirectX better be thread safe...

[Onetus (23797)]

Insert obvious joke about Blue-Screen of Death here.

This would be great,

[gijoel (628142)]

If I didn't have to think in Russian.

Re:

[Walt Dismal (534799)]

Clint, ditch the orangutan!

non-gaming application

[Corpuscavernosa (996139)]

The online porn experience would be greatly simplified.

Correction

[by Anonymous Coward]

The article says the device will cost an estimated $300, not $600.

I love gaming as much as anyone...

[by Anonymous Coward]

While many professional gamers spend many hours every day for several years training these reflexes

but that makes even me chuckle.

Re:

[Datamonstar (845886)]

The Evolution series of fighting game tournaments can't even touch the type of thing we see in Quake, and Halo tournaments, yet people practice indeed several days at a time most days of the year for these tournaments. I can't even imagine the sort of time a player like Justin Wong, RX, Sanford Kelly, and Demon Hyo has to put in in order to compete at the level they do so consistently. Personally, I'm a casual tournament player and I've spent hours at a time, sometimes the better portion of a day simply e

Uses for this technology

[whistlingtony (691548)]

No No No.... "reaction times can be cut by anything up to 60%" I don't care about reaction times. I care about my wrists. Frag gaming, just let me move my mouse for more than an hour without painful twinges and numbness.

Also, these idiots are missing a revolution here. I believe that something like this device coupled with HUD glasses will be a revolution as large as the mouse and GUI were back in the day.

Right now I am coupled to my computer. It got better when I got a laptop. Now my computer comes with me. Still though, I have to take it out, sit down, and while I'm using my computer I'm stuck staring at a screen and using a keyboard/mouse. The "Mobile" in mobile computing only counts when you're not using your computer.

Imagine if you didn't even have to take out your computer.

Leave your computer in your bookbag or pocket. Put on your display glasses so you can see your "screen" hovering in your view. Use a headband (perhaps hidden in your hat) to control the interface (and perhaps one day type). Use speech recognition to type and control.

No more hands. No more being chained to your computer. This frees us as much as the mouse/gui freed us, and will pave the way to opportunities I can't even imagine....

And these idiots are touting it as a gaming gimmick. Not even one mention of UI possibilities. Sigh.

I want my Shadowrun Comlink. The future is staring at us and people aren't even paying attention.

-Tony

Re:Uses for this technology

[QuantumG (50515)]

Hey, it's you who is failing the imagination test.

"Mobile computing" is currently about doing the stuff you do on a desktop computer while you are not sitting at a desk. This even includes "making calls", even if you more often than not use your land line instead of something like Skype when you are at your desk.

In the future (the magical super future) the computers that are sewn into your clothes will not be helping you check your email.. they are will be helping you do all those things that just don't make any sense if you're not on the move:

    * Helping you avoid traffic jams
    * Telling you when the next bus/train/rocket is leaving on your regular route so you know to walk faster
    * Posting your position to Facebook - or whatever takes its place
    * Keeping track of where your friends are - cause kids in the future will care more about being able to find their friends than who can see where they are.
    * Enabling you to search the local environment for businesses, single women, whatever.
    * Interacting with all the new network enabled devices that haven't been invented yet.. and don't be surprised if you can't even get a coke from a vending machine if you don't have sufficient network presence.

and so on and so on.

Re:

[backslashdot (95548)]

Yes but they will also let me check email, type responses, and look up stuff on the web. All of which can be controlled by thought. There will have to be some thought pattern or sequence standardization i reckon.

Ducks...

[nexuspal (720736)]

Probably Patented... And if not, does your mentioning it here count as prior art? Really good look at the future of computing, especially if this device works by reading thoughts. Hell, you could morse code characters with your thoughts initially, if need be.

Re:Uses for this technology

[The Master Control P (655590)]

If using the mouse hurts your wrist, get a trackman. They're awesome. Plus, you can turn down your pointer acceleration and still conserve a lot of space since you don't need to move anything but your thumb.

In any case, there's something even more important than having display glasses let you use your computer while mobile: This is a major step towards augmented reality [youtube.com]. We can do the visual overlay with some effort, and the audio overlay is as simple as a mic & headphones. But this is what will enable you to do something in virtual reality without appearing to be in a trance. Just fucking think about that for a second. Don't like your home decor? Think your way through the menus and *poof,* new decor is overlaid on your walls - no pesky laws of physics attached either. Instead of talking into a block, you talk to your friend's avatar right in front of you (which is copying your friend's facial expressions to boot). Teleconference? Telepresence. You'd never get lost again - stick a GPS card into your laptop and overlay a line leading you to your destination in your vision. Designing something? Have the design hover in front of you, see how it fits in.

I mean, augmented reality is pretty much the next best thing before the Singularity. Imagine living at the intersection of two realities, physical and cyber. An LCOS display in your glasses overlays the cyber world (however you wish to perceive it) onto a video feed captured by stereo cameras mounted on the rims. A next-generation cochlear implant overlays sounds from your computer - pings about new e-mails, new aim info, new searches, new news - straight into your mind. My book hovers in front of me and flips the page when my eyes reach the last line.

This is incomprehensibly awesome.

Where's the...

[Nutria (679911)]

... Linux driver?

Re:

[Clay Pigeon -TPF-VS- (624050)]

It shall be released once linux gaming makes it mainstream.

Screw you, 30 second timer.

Don't complain

[Smordnys s'regrepsA (1160895)]

If you don't see a Linux driver for anything, don't complain - code. It isn't hard to learn, or to implement. Then, once you're finished you have a working device and you can be the hero of a small subset of the OSS community.

...or, have you forgotten that the entire reason OSS is supposed to be much better than closed source is that everyone/anyone can (and should) improve it?

Right here

[Chuck Chunder (21021)]

cat /dev/urandom > /dev/input/js0

My friend

[Smordnys s'regrepsA (1160895)]

My friend did his thesis on using (basically) this system to help invalids participate in the world, about 10 years ago. According to him, at first everyone can raise or lower all their brain waves at once, and within a month can raise or lower a specific wave. At first for it to be accurate, you need to have the system read muscle movement for facial tics, but gradually you can phase out this input as the patient becomes more adept at controlling his mental state. The hardest part of writing his thesis was getting time with the equipment.

Forget about games, this being mass-produced is a great step towards turning the handicapped into the handicapable .

Also, look for the New Agers gobbling this stuff up for their meditation ceremonies.

Neuroprosthetics, bionic man control?

[garlicbready (846542)]

I'm not disabled myself
but the first thing that comes to mind with one of these things
is if it could be used to control motorized missing limbs?
wikipedia mentions neural interfaces that connect directly to the brain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroprosthetics [wikipedia.org]

if you could carry a laptop around with one of these little boxes
it might be a bit more convenient (and perhaps safer) that having direct brain implants
with enough time and miniaturization you might even be able to get feedback
not to mention

bioptentialsisnotaword

[evanbd (210358)]

Bioptentials is not a word. There are plenty of words they could have used, there was no need to make one up.

Re:

[Lunix Nutcase (1092239)]

The part that was quoted had the word mistyped. The word is later correctly spelled as biopotential.

competitor

[Danny Rathjens (8471)]

Looks like they may be beating http://www.emotiv.com/ [emotiv.com] 's "EPOC Neuroheadset" to market by several months. The claim for the EPOC was that it would be available for the holidays at the end of 2008. Interesting that they are also planning to sell for the same $300 price as this OCZ one.

Pricetag in summary doesn't match article...

[deathy_epl+ccs (896747)]

I've read a couple of articles about it now, and they've both said $300 but the summary says $600... what gives?

Re:

[DMUTPeregrine (612791)]

Projected change in value of the US dollar over the next 2 weeks perhaps? I didn't think it was falling quite that fast though, it will probably only be $500.

Old Hat New Trick

[milsoRgen (1016505)]

They had something very similar back in the day for the Sega Genesis I do believe. It was marketed as 'mind controlled' or what have you but in all actually got it's input from the muscle movements around your eyes which in turn the head band you would be wearing would interpret as some sort of signal. If I remember correctly it performed about as well as an NES Power Glove. [youtube.com]

Re:

[milsoRgen (1016505)]

I hate to reply to myself but,

However, the nia does have a big advantage over the traditional mouse with OCZ claiming that reaction times can be cut by anything up to 60%.

Why that may very well be true, but we are talking about milliseconds here... If I remember correctly, that is an issue in neuro science as to why we don't notice the actual lag from when our brain sends the command and our muscles respond... I believe it was in an Scientific American 'Mind' quarterly from a year or two ago (I'll dig it out later if need be). Either way theres a lag between command and response, but in the 200-300ms region (which we don't perceive, one of the

So what happens

[Velocir (851555)]

When you're playing Battlefield 1942 and you see a tank shell coming for your face? I find it very hard to believe this kind of technology will be able to interpret the "OH SHIT" reflex accurately...

unclear what this does

[nguy (1207026)]

It's unclear from the description what this actually does. I don't think they claim that it reads electrical signals from the brain directly. There are lots of other electrical signals that it might be reading.

Of course, whatever it reads, it may still be useful.

Awesome military applications?

[DraconPern (521756)]

Brain interfaced targetting support? better UVA flight manuvers? Attack helicopters needing only one person because the pilot can now control the gun with his mind? If the military thought using xbox 360 controls was innovative... wait until we present these things to the brass!

Linux drivers? Time to get started.

[alizard (107678)]

I hope to see people buying these and writing Linux hacks to get it working on Linux as soon as it goes on sale... maybe we can have a kernel driver by the 2.6.30 release?

I then hope to see people writing FOSS APIs that can be used in non-gaming applications (word processor, anyone? Lots of embedded possibilities... imagine using this as a UI for graphics applications... whether for paint or CAD/CAM apps)

Don't they mean "sensor"?

[Emil Brink (69213)]

How can the product be an actuator, and consist of sensors? Aren't those like ... opposites? Am I just being old-fashioned in thinking of the device as a sensor, used by the computer, to detect brain activity? Is a joystick also an actuator?

The article is wrong...

[adamchou (993073)]

From TFA... "the OCZ neural impulse actuator doesn't use electrode cream, which is a good thing because the last thing gamers would want to do is lube up before playing their favorite game."

They clearly haven't tested it with this game [3dslut.com] yet...

This is so real.

[BluFusion (1249440)]

... WOW.
... WOW.

It is real and the technology exists. I have had past PERSONAL experience with computer control via neural feedback.

--side story to explain: I have ADD and aspergers. When I was about 8 (I think) I saw for some time a particular specialist and one of the activities I did was to be hooked up (with electrodes on my head) to a computer and navigate a 2D map with a little dot.

Not quite the level of control that you'd need however I can tell you with practice it gets easier.

This is amazing stuff. I'm so getting one.

Power of the mind?

[reboot246 (623534)]

Users of the NIA will be able to control their in-game movements using only the power of mind.

'Tis a shame some won't be able to play. :)

Re:

[Corpuscavernosa (996139)]

Seriously. I just can't imagine that this could possibly work better than keyboard/mouse setup.

In Crysis, for example, there is so much input/output between switching weapons, suit settings, reload, not to metion run-of-the-mill aiming and movement. There's just no way without even a minor component like some sort of eye motion scan.

If it works well, I'll be the first to happily call myself an unbelieving douche and will post naked pictures of me playing games with it. Not that anyone wants to see th

Re:April Fools!?

[khellendros1984 (792761)]

I actually saw something like this at CES '07. It was able to tell the difference between "relax" and "concentrate", for instance. They had it hooked up as a Half-Life 2 modification. If you concentrated, the things under the cursor would start to explode. Relax, and they would start floating around your head. It was pretty cool to watch, but it's not something that would be useful for playing most fast-paced games.

Re:

[packeteer (566398)]

Of course its not useful yet. Most of what happens in fast paced games does not go through your conscious mind. Most fast past gaming skills are simple muscle memory and hand eye coordination. The best gamers are on top of their game as they relax and stop thinking about anything. The less you engage your mind the better you do.

Re:

[networkBoy (774728)]

You know, almost 17 hours before this was posted, my wife's uncle had a stroke. Should he survive he likely will never talk again and his motor skills will be poor enough that typing will be labor intensive for him. All I can think is WOW, this is only $300, and would have been 10 grand just 5 years ago.

I'll be buying one, but not for games. Even if Ken doesn't make it, I think there is promise in a software app to use this for limited communication (teach limited words: yes, no, hurt, cold, hot, help, h

Re:April Fools!?

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

Seriously. I just can't imagine that this could possibly work better than keyboard/mouse setup.

Next thing, they're gonna tell us you'll be able to play video games by waving a little stick at the screen.

Re:April Fools!?

[DMUTPeregrine (612791)]

Not necessarily. There have been devices like this for paralyzed people for years. The big innovation would be making it small and cheap enough to sell, which they say they have done.
A more detailed review [legitreviews.com] might help.

Re:

[milsoRgen (1016505)]

There have been devices like this for paralyzed people for years.

Yes they have, but they require in depth training and in no way can they even parallel what can be down with a keyboard mouse combo. Let alone a keyboard itself. It's basically a yes or no response, true or false etc. Probably a bit more advanced nowadays. But it would still probably be operated with a similar interface, such as a group of letters would appear on the screen, you issue basic commands to select the character or move to the next set.

So even typing out a simple email is/would be very time con

Not April fools...

[WebCowboy (196209)]

...it's real, and it's a very old idea. Atari created a very similar device [atarimuseum.com] 25 years ago. It was crude by today's standards (you very nearly had to move your eyebrows for it to register movement) but it did work. Atari had working prototypes at a CES in the early 1980s--people could play pong and breakout with the "mindlink". It was a crude form of the very same technology used here, though it was much less sensitive and required a bit of muscle movement for it to pick up neural impulses. The technology was developed for myoelectric prosthetic limbs and has matured greatly since those days.

Atari's MindLink controller was never released to production though...testers often experienced tension headaches after using the device for extended sessions and it was not very precise. Beyond pong and breakout and other simple games it was not very effective because users had trouble coping with more than simple linear control. Also, furhter refinement of the product was abandoned as this was around the time of the Tramiel takeover (and Tramiel was known not to ever be enthusiastic about the potential of home video game consoles vs. low cost home computers) and the big console industry shakeout made for a lot of vapourware from all industry players.

Certainly with increased processing power and better sensor technology in the past 25 years there could be much more potential in such a device, especially for those who have physical disabilities that prevent them from effectively using keyboards and mice. This isn't April fools or even a new idea, and it employs passive sensors (they do not transmit neural impulses--only detect the ones you generate) so a "blue screen of death" won't really kill you, and if you get a good fragging it won't fry your brain (the feedback is only visual--what is on the screen).

Re:

[Brian Gordon (987471)]

Hooking up brain controllers and then experiencing tension headaches? O_O sounds horrific. Those would be from concentrating so hard right?

Re:

[Dice (109560)]

Yeah, I checked my calendar too.

OMG!!! Ponies!!!

If it has API - it will ROCK

[npetrov (1170273)]

If it has API it will rock as a secondary input system to mouse. You will be able to scroll through text/code just by looking, switch windows, copy paste - it has an enormous potential. Again, if it can be trained to work with 99.9% precision like a mouse.

Re:

[markov_chain (202465)]

Dude what are you talking about. I just let arthritis freeze my pinky permanently pressing down the Control key (mapped to Caps Lock, of course), making Emacs use a breeze. It's the opposite of damage!

Re:

[compro01 (777531)]

i'm confused myself, as i've seen some articles quoting the price as 300, which is about $600 USD, and others saying $300.

Re:

[jamesh (87723)]

RSI may one day be a thing of the past, but i'd be concerned about the chance of a severe electric shock. Have a read around the DIY EEG pages... there is a lot of concern about optically isolated sensors etc.

The problem is that you normally attach the sensors to your head with a conductive gel or something similar, so if the system fails in such a way that a large voltage potential develops between two sesors, or a sensor and ground, the path to your insides (eg your brain) has a lot less resistance than d

Escape key

[MichaelSmith (789609)]

it is unlikely that the sensor will be able to map the complex ideas of the mind, instead it would reduce it to basic commands, so they can be mapped to the computer.

I wonder if it could pick up the OhFuckGetmeOutOfHere signal in the brain when things go really bad and bind it to generic backout/escape/undo actions. Handy for ejector seats in military aircraft too.

I work with ATC user interfaces and I wonder if something like this could be used to sense cognitive overload when the controllers job gets busy.

Re:

[SirSlud (67381)]

Reports suggest that some side effects due to haphazard "electrical signals" result in the user asking mindbogglingly stupid questions.

Re:

[jamesh (87723)]

The EEG sensors that i'm familiar with require a conductive gel between them and your head. This greatly reduces the voltage required to give you serious problems. The concern is that an errant voltage (lightning strike, power surge, equipment failure) poses a much more serious threat once you have reduced the resistance between the equipment and your body.