
IBM programmer controls a BB-8 droid from 'Star Wars' with his mind - jonbaer
http://www.businessinsider.in/This-IBM-programmer-can-control-a-BB-8-droid-from-Star-Wars-with-his-mind/articleshow/50539245.cms
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dahart
This is cool! The video made me chuckle because it's nearly content free but
has a lot of techy jargon, and because of the shots of him outstretching his
arm using "the force".

The tech is real though, even if they didn't say anything meaningful about how
it's actually done.

I saw a research paper talk at the EVOSTAR conference in 2007, and the author
had successfully controlled a mouse cursor in 2d using a handful of sensors
placed on his head, and training a neural network. He couldn't move the
pointer quickly or particularly accurately, but it definitely works. He also
mentioned that using this contraption and training the software was the single
most mentally demanding thing he'd ever done, and that he'd be completely
exhausted and sweating from his scalp after 7-8 minutes of trying.

*edited for spelling

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hagope
I've tried the Emotiv headset, it doesn't work as advertised at all.
Occasionally I could get the device to send the signal I was imagining, but it
seemed pretty random. This is pure marketing for IBM cloud services, the video
doesn't show or prove that he can move the device with is mind with any degree
of control.

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dang
What's on the market that does work? I've been waiting for the chance to
experiment with this stuff for years. Last I tried, the thing I bought didn't
work either.

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dragonbonheur
Emotiv did more of the work than IBM here. Watch Tan Le's TED Talks for more
details.

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hexagonc
I couldn't tell from the article or the video what the latency of this thing
was. What is the error rate in interpreting his states of mind and translating
them into commands to the toy? The demonstration would have been much more
impressive if he could show a video of the robot performing complex maneuvers
from thought control.

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eridal
Anybody tinkered with the headset? It's $360 for the most basic.

[https://emotiv.com/insight.php](https://emotiv.com/insight.php)

EDIT: seems you need to buy the $750 to read raw data.. and you can only
publish open source apps or you need to buy a $1000 license, includes 5 user
at 1 platform

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fatjokes
If you want a cheaper consumer EEG sensor, you can check out Neurosky, which
retails ~$100 and also has an SDK. Be forewarned about consumer EEG headsets
though: they're slightly less random than a PRNG. Real EEG experiments usually
happen in Faraday cages.

